Documents posted online by a firm affiliated with a pro-DeSantis super PAC lay out advice for the Florida governor in advance of the first Republican presidential debate.
To seize the spotlight at the first Republican presidential debate next week, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis must defend former president Donald Trump, “pivot” to attacking President Biden and the media at least three times, and show emotion when telling an anecdote about his family, according to documents posted online by a firm affiliated with a pro-DeSantis super PAC.
The documents contain a load of information — including polling data and analysis of other candidates’ attack styles — intended to guide DeSantis, one of several candidates for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination who has struggled to gain momentum in his challenge of Trump.
The documents, first reported by the New York Times, were posted earlier this month to the website of Axiom Strategies, a firm owned by the chief strategist of the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down. Federal law prohibits super PACs from coordinating with political campaigns on spending and messaging, but super PACs have typically worked around such rules by publicly posting memos containing research and strategy.
One memo obtained by The , which has since been deleted from Axiom’s website, lays out four “must-dos” for DeSantis at Wednesday’s primary debate in Milwaukee. Those include attacking Biden and the media at least three times, stating his “positive vision” for the country at least twice, attacking entrepreneur and fellow Republican primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and defending Trump, who has said he may not participate in debates.
“This was not a campaign memo and we were not aware of it prior to the article,” Andrew Romeo, communications director for the DeSantis campaign, said in a statement Thursday. “We are by now well accustomed to the attacks from all sides as the media and other candidates realize Ron DeSantis is the strongest candidate best positioned to take down Joe Biden.”
The memo contains the subject line “RE: Orchestra pit,” a reference to the late Fox News chairman Roger Ailes’s theory that making mistakes and choreographing attacks are more likely to garner media coverage than articulating policy positions during a televised debate.
“You have two guys onstage and one guy says, ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls in the orchestra pit,” Ailes once said. “Who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”
The document, which refers to DeSantis as “GRD,” then proposes four potential “orchestra pit moments” for him, including telling a story about his family (“showing emotion,” the memo advises) and taking “a sledgehammer to” Ramaswamy by slamming him as “Fake Vivek” or “Vivek the Fake.
