For those willing to accept the premise, it’s easy to ascertain which potential Republican candidate the Democratic Party-supporting mainstream media fears most for the 2024 election. Based on the negative pounding he has been taking in the press, the answer is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. It appears that many in the media view DeSantis as an elected official whose policies are similar to Trump’s, without the former president’s ego and baggage.

And guess what? For tens of millions of Americans who did vote for Trump in 2020, such a “negative” designation by some media would be validation for a DeSantis campaign and for assigning him their vote in 2024. Trump’s immature insults and dangerous rhetoric aside, many of his policies were clear winners with millions of American voters, including many in minority communities. These voters might put their hope in DeSantis to expand upon Trump’s winning policies.

With regard to the Trump-DeSantis comparison, another fairly accepted truth is that human nature dictates that people generally don’t like to be proven wrong or irrelevant, and often will strike back. It can be argued that, in 2015 and 2016, Trump proved many media and political pundits embarrassingly wrong and irrelevant.