Message to Ron DeSantis: It's time for you to become America's meatball!

Tropic Press is pleased to share this satirical commentary from Diane Roberts of Florida Phoenix

Apr 14, 2026

By Diane Roberts

Florida Phoenix

Run, Ron, run!

Seriously Dude, run for president in ’28.

A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

You broke hearts back in ’24 when you dropped out after the Iowa Caucuses: You tried so hard and came so close!

OK, so you actually came a distant second to the Current Occupant, but those good farm folk did not then realize he’d let Pete Hegseth go play with the Pentagon’s cool death toys in the Middle East to raise the price of oil and make ExxonMobil — and the price of fuel — great again.

Filling up the old combine harvester these days is a B-I-sort-of-rhymes-with-“sandwich,” so the farmers will now have seen the error of their ways.

I mean, probably.

The Boo Birds and Naysayers will nit-pick your earlier campaign: your weird laugh; your hectoring tone; that time you totally ignored the governor of Iowa even though she’d endorsed you and tried to help humanize you at a campaign rally.

Also, that time you sugar-shamed a kid drinking an Icee at the Iowa State Fair.

And that time you shook your wife’s hand.

People forget you were the only candidate who received a trophy.

It was, admittedly, a participation trophy from a guy who said, “We’re proud of you for trying,” then turned to the town hall audience, adding, “He’s special, he’s unique, and he’s our little snowflake.”

Everybody thought that was super-sweet.

Seriously, Ron, you shouldn’t have bailed! You were going to get stomped in New Hampshire, sure, but nobody cares about New Hampshire. It’s cold and their Republicans aren’t real Republicans.

Many of them listen to classical music and drink wine.

Blank slate

Unlike New Hampshire, which barely seems part of America, in South Carolina you had a real chance to shine.

You were, we know, more at home in South Carolina. It’s humid, marshy, subject to hurricanes, and proudly stuck in the past — just like Florida.

You could have probably given the Current Occupant a run for his money, maybe coming in second again, but a closer second.

If you’d hung in there, maybe the Current Occupant would have respected you more and given you a Cabinet gig or at least stopped dissing you every chance he gets.

Oh, well: dirty water under the crumbling bridge. It’s a new day! 2028 is a blank slate, a freshly painted wall that has yet to be graffitied.

Now, in 2026, your hundreds of fans dare to hope again.

On the “Hang Out with Sean Hannity” podcast, you said, “I mean, I think that in ’24, like in Iowa, the people that voted for Trump — if he wasn’t running, I would have gotten, like, 90% of those people.”

Totally!

You had brilliantly overcome the Nazi campaign video thing and the eating pudding with your fingers thing, which was fake news even though it was true.

In 2022, you led Trump in the polls — by 15-20 points. After the Jan. 6 thing, he looked like toast.

Burnt toast, at that.

But then Trump got convicted on 34 felony counts and, by February, was back on top.

People felt sorry for the old man, getting busted for porn star hush money, falsifying business records, and also sexually assaulting that writer-lady.

The old man can’t run again.

At least, he’s not supposed to.

‘DeFUTURE’

Rupert Murdoch loved you once; he can love you again — assuming he lives long enough.

You were “DeFUTURE.”

Murdoch done you wrong, running back to Trump like a scalded dog, betraying the love you gave him.

Be cool, Ron: Fox will sober up, come to its senses, and realize only you can save this nation from the Red Chinese, the whiny Ukrainians, vaccines, the powerful Palestinian lobby, crazed sociology majors, climate change radicals, feminists, soft-on-illegal-immigrants sheriffs, and anything else threatening Americans’ precious bodily fluids.

Pro tip: Send flowers.

Now, it’s true some ex-GOP, ex-congressman called you “uniquely unlikeable.”

Poppycock.

Has this guy never met Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas?

One of Cruz’s Senate colleagues described him as a person who would microwave fish in the office kitchen.

You would never microwave fish.

You would never run off to a Foreign Country in the middle of a terrible storm crisis disaster just because your kids wanted a Mexican vacay.

No, if it was your kids, like the great dad you are, you’d tell them to tough it out while you made sure you got on television every news cycle, preferably wearing white fisherman boots.

Because you’re authentic.

Ted Cruz is thinking of running in 2028.

So are a lot of other losers. Look at the so-called “competition” for the Republican nomination.

Sens. Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton might throw their truck hats into the ring.

One’s from Arkansas and one’s from Missouri, states that, unlike Florida, cannot be called “cool.”

Plus, they both have skinny necks, which makes it hard to tell them apart.

In contrast, your neck is manly.

You can’t tell what kind of neck the alleged “front-runner,” Vice President J.D. Vance, has.

The beard gets in the way. Our Minister for War with Overwhelming Violence would call him a “beardo.”

Rust Belter Dunedinite

Memo to J.D.: We’ve moved on from Abraham Lincoln, who was kind of woke, anyway.

(As you have pointed out, enslaved people learned useful skills, which helped them in their post-slavery careers.)

Actually, the beard is the least of J.D.’s problems.

Sure, he came top of the CPAC straw poll, but I wouldn’t take that too seriously. You didn’t demean yourself by schmoozing in Dallas, yet still pulled an impressive 2 percent, right up there with Don Jr.

J.D. claims he’s, like, a “hillbilly.”

Give me a break.

He’s Ivy League all the way, unlike a fine Rust Belter Dunedinite like yourself.

Yeah, you also went to Yale, but not like him. You paid for college with jobs like moving furniture and retrieving soccer balls kicked around by elites in blazers.

You are totally American, a baseball player, a custard dessert-lover, not like him with his fancy foreign wife and his fancy gay hedge fund pals and his unbiblical notions.

J.D. used to be VERY CLOSE FRIENDS with one of those “transgenders” who calls him or herself “they.”

He signed his emails to this person “love you” and, at one point in 2016, said, “The more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer. I really believe that.”

You would never say anything so WOKE.

Speaking of woke, I’d say your biggest 2028 problem is your supposed fellow Floridian Marco Rubio.

He got 35 percent at CPAC.

Like J.D. he’s got liberal thought-skeletons in his closet.

Not so long ago, he was all for so-called humanitarian assistance to countries with diseases, funding anti-violence programs across the world, giving Ukraine money, and feeding hungry children.

He used to say stuff like, “Foreign aid is a very cost-effective way, not only to export our values and our example, but to advance our security and our economic interests.”

Busted, Marco.

Warrior of God

These ungrateful foreigners should never get a red, white, and blue cent of our money.

America First!

Besides, is Marco actually American?

He is given to frequent speaking of a Foreign Language.

You speak no Foreign Language, which is exactly how we Floridians like it.

Another question: What if the Supreme Court dumps birthright citizenship?

You, Governor, understand the Constitution got it wrong with the 14th Amendment and have often demanded the court fix it.

Pandering Marco insists he’s also in favor of denying citizenship to babies who may be birthed here, but whose parents are non-Americans.

There’s just one little problem.

Marco was born in Miami in 1971. His Cuban parents didn’t become citizens till 1975.

Do the math.

You can use this: Make a campaign ad.

Maybe get Casey to star.

Another 2028 ad could address Marco’s false assertions regarding his height.

He alleges he’s 5’9″.

Please.

We all know he’s too petite for the presidency. No president has ever been so shrimpy, except for Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and a couple of guys nobody’s ever heard of.

You, on the other hand, are at least 5’11”, especially if you wear your special shoes.

But none of this is important. What’s important is you, Ron.

Also, America is important.

What kind of nation do we want to be? One led by a beardo from the Midwest who probably eats casseroles?

A Miami guy of uncertain status?

Or you, a true American, a Florida man, a patriot who served honorably as an assistant urinalysis coordinator at Guantánamo, knows vaccines are bad, sustainable energy is bad, education is bad, welfare is bad.

And Spanish? Also bad.

Ron: You have to run.

You are the One, the Guy, the Chosen, the Good Hombre, the Warrior of God.

The choice is this:

Tres leches or pizza?

Plantains or cannoli?

Ropa vieja or meatballs?

Come on, Ron.

Be America’s meatball.

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.

Onward thru the fog

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed if you are a rational person living in the Free State of Florida, but there are plenty of smart, reasonable people just like you here. The purpose of this newsletter and the Tropic Press website is to provide a source of news and commentary that shines a light through this irrational fog. That includes both original reporting and shared stories such as this one today by Diane Roberts of Florida Phoenix.

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