June 4
Ron DeSantis returned from a swing through the early primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
June 5
The DeSantis campaign released a new ad which, controversially, used artificial intelligence to generate fake images of President Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci on the forehead.
June 6
Ahead of a weekend visit to Oklahoma, 20 Republican legislators from the state, including several figures from the leadership in the Oklahoma House of Representatives.
June 7
In a surprise move, DeSantis made a trip to the US border with Mexico in Arizona, where he defended his latest organization of a charter flight to move immigrants from the border, this time dumping them in Sacramento, CA having previously authorized similar operations to Martha’s Vineyard and Washington, DC. He spoke at a round table in Sierra Vista, Arizona with law enforcement personnel from Arizona, Florida and Texas, telling those present that the border “just needs to be shut down.”
June 8
Moving East, Ron DeSantis touched down in Texas to meet with big-dollar donors in Midland, Fort Worth, Dallas and Houston looking to generate some cash to get his campaign back on track.
June 9
DeSantis made two more stops in The Woodlands and Austin before flying to North Carolina. He spoke to the North Carolina Republican Party Convention in Greensboro, competing with President Biden for attention, who was also in the state touting his economic agenda. Speaking in the wake of former President Trump’s latest indictment, DeSantis attempted to cross a MAGA minefield, calling out a perceived double standard between Trump’s situation regarding the keeping of classified documents in Mar-a-Lago and Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, calling back to the 2016 campaign.
June 10
Tulsa, Oklahoma played host to DeSantis’s latest campaign stop where the Sooner State’s governor Kevin Stitt awarded his endorsement along with an impassioned speech touting DeSantis’s COVID-19 record. This is an area that Trump has been hitting him hard on recently, slamming the lockdowns that DeSantis instituted in 2020.
This week, the DeSantis campaign took a slightly different tack, visiting four states not amongst the early primaries to hold set piece events and private fundraisers. There was a seeming avoidance of direct public voter contact off the back of persistent media coverage of his questionable people skills. One thing that is becoming clear is that whilst DeSantis himself may struggle in the retail politics department, the campaign is utilising his wife, Casey, instead. She has been glued to his side in recent weeks and front and centre on social media. One thing is for sure, however. DeSantis is very currently running a highly active, energetic campaign and he’s not waiting around for Trump to get any more of a foothold.
