Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are ideologically aligned on most issues in their competition to win the Republican nomination for President of The United States. However, there are some key contrasts that provide a significant distinction between the two political rivals, and most of it has to do with the role of government in the economy.
Bitcoin
Ron DeSantis is unapologetically pro-Bitcoin and more broadly supports the rights of Americans to participate in a voluntary, market-based monetary system. In a Twitter Spaces Thursday evening, the Florida Governor made clear that he supports the use of bitcoin, and articulated why the Washington establishment disapproves of it. “I’ll protect the ability to do things like bitcoin,” he said, adding, “I don’t have an itch to control everything that people may be doing in this space.”
Moreover, Governor DeSantis has more broadly taken on the evolving digital space, drawing a distinction between distributed, decentralized assets like bitcoin, and government-backed tools for control and censorship. In Florida, he has implemented measures to forbid the use of any potential Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), warning that these tools can be used to implement a China-like Social Credit Score system in the United States. As governor, DeSantis has taken on the Davos ESG mafia, combatting the centralization of economic corporate and governmental power.
Trump, on the other hand, has long opposed bitcoin, claiming in a 2019 tweet that it is a tool of “unlawful behavior,” and that the government should take a more active role in regulating digital assets.
Notably, there is no more widely used tool for unlawful behavior than the U.S. Dollar, which is the preferred currency of terrorist organizations like ISIS.
In a 2021 in an interview with Fox News, Trump doubled down on his anti-bitcoin stance, declaring, “Bitcoin just seems like a scam. I don’t like it because it’s another currency competing against the dollar. I want the dollar to be the currency of the world; that’s what I’ve always said.”
President Trump has not publicly spoken about the potential threat posed by a CBDC or any other centralized monetary measures.
The Money Printer/The Fed
The former president has forwarded a convoluted message on monetary policy. On the one hand, he’s called for a return to the gold standard, and even, to his credit, tried to appoint the pro-gold standard Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board. However, for most of his tenure as commander in chief, Trump was heavily in favor of unchecked monetary expansion and the growth of government as a whole.
Trump infamously encouraged Congress to authorize pandemic “emergency” spending of over 2 trillion dollars, and routinely proposed record budgets. These policies led to soaring inflation and the rapid debasement of Americans’ wealth. He ruthlessly attacked Rep Thomas Massie for opposing the money printing fiasco, and later supported an unsuccessful campaign to wage a primary battle against the Kentucky Republican.
For all his righteous condemnation of the “deep state” and the nefarious corporate agenda in politics, Trump’s policies acted to bolster the very forces he publicly opposes.
