To this day DeSantis and his staff continue to cavort with convicted insurrectionists and at the same time that they court right-wing media members who have perpetuated the Big Lie narrative.

To my knowledge there have never even been reports that DeSantis admonished Trump privately—you know, like one of those adults in the room trying to land the plane—in the days after a MAGA mob spilled blood on the Capitol. He hasn’t been featured in any of the books about “privately concerned” Republicans acknowledging—when they’re in a safe space—that they understand the truth.

So the argument that DeSantis presents less of a threat to democracy rests on a very thin reed.

We are being asked, without evidence from DeSantis himself, to trust that he won’t support the kind of anti-democratic insurrection that he encouraged last time. We have to just assume he “gets the joke.”

Under this best-case, most-charitable, reading, we are asked to accept that DeSantis privately knows right from wrong, but that either (a) he is too weak and compromised to insist on it publicly; or (b) the Republican electorate is so far gone that they will not accept pro-democracy arguments from anyone and thus there should be no expectation that a candidate speak truth.