> Since President Trump left office, many of the “trustworthy” media outlets have created a talking point that is now held by a minority, yet noticeable number of Conservative Americans. The belief is “DeSantis is Trump, without the baggage.” This group supported President Trump’s policies and felt he did a tremendous job as president, but now feel the baggage that came with Trump would not be present with Ron DeSantis. Many have taken this a step further and believe this baggage would give DeSantis (or others) a better chance of winning in a general election against the Democrat nominee than President Trump. > The first and most important angle to consider when analyzing this stance is the present reality of American elections. President Trump’s seemingly insurmountable election night leads in 2020, which were significantly larger than his leads throughout the night in 2016, somehow vanished into slim Biden victories. In other words: Without our corrupt election systems being corrected, it doesn’t matter who runs since the winner is predetermined. Trump didn’t cost us; the election was stolen. But for the sake of this discussion, we’ll say that our elections are free and fair. > Despite his alleged loss, Trump gained more than 12 million votes from 2016 (and likely more,) the largest increase in vote total for any sitting president in American history and the highest vote total by any presidential candidate ever, aside from Biden’s highly suspicious 81 million votes that same year. So, the media-manufactured Trump baggage has not had any negative impact on voter enthusiasm for Trump. Based on his vote increasing by millions, you could make the argument the baggage led to more people rallying to support him.