Trump and DeSantis Wage War About Issues Almost Nobody Cares About

For weeks, Republican presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have been trading jabs about their respective policies to rein in the COVID-19 pandemic. But in a competitive primary in 2024, most voters have moved on to what they see as more pressing issues, including concerns over the economy, U.S. foreign policy and free speech.

Trump—the self-professed "father" of the COVID-19 vaccine—has been the subject of mounting criticism by DeSantis and his supporters for rushing the vaccine to market after months of the Florida governor casting doubts about its safety and efficacy.

The former president, meanwhile, has criticized DeSantis' earliest efforts to stall the virus' spread by shutting down Florida's borders and imposing lockdowns that DeSantis would later buck, even going as far as claiming liberal New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's handling of the pandemic was more competent—even after Trump previously praised the Florida governor's performance.

"These are just frivolous criticisms," DeSantis fired back during a fiery Thursday press conference. "[...]he's saying things that are false."

The debate could be seen as an effort by the two candidates to differentiate themselves on an issue that proved a crucial driver for Republicans' enthusiasm at the pandemic's peak in 2020, but enthusiasm around the issue has been flat for a while.

An April 2022 Gallup poll showed that just 3 percent of Americans believed the coronavirus or diseases was the top problem facing the country—fewer than half the previous low of 8 percent in mid-2021 when case rates were falling.

More recent polling by the Pew Research Center shows COVID-19 as the least important issue in America. And while popular support for mask and vaccine mandates dissipated as recently as October, according to polling by Monmouth University at the time, it came at a time a large share of the population had largely stopped being concerned about it.

Other Monmouth polling—such as a survey released by the university on Wednesday—suggests that few in the U.S. see COVID-related issues as inherently threatening to their way of life. The Fourth Amendment and the right to privacy, largely the one most in tune with vaccination status, polled as the most pressing liberty under threat for just 4 percent of GOP voters, while concerns over areas like gun rights and free speech proved to be far greater priorities.

Republican pollsters have noticed it as well.

Mark Mitchell, head pollster with conservative pollster Rasmussen, told Newsweek that they stopped asking voters about their attitudes toward the COVID-19 pandemic on September 27 after polling showed nearly two-thirds of respondents believed the pandemic was over.

At this point, he said, voters are instead focused on the after-effects of COVID—issues like languishing school test scores, for example—though he believed either candidate's respective policies against COVID would largely have little impact on voter attitudes.

"I'm not sure how much of their support is coming from their actual positions," Mitchell said. "I really do think this is more of a Trump Republican vs Non-Trump Republican race, because Trump's numbers seem to be driven more by his performance, not anything DeSantis does, and new entrants seem to peel support from DeSantis, not Trump."

Boding even worse is that Republicans, fighting their own battles on a worn-out issue, are still on the losing side of public opinion. Ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, Democratic governors received higher marks from general election voters on their pandemic management policies than Republicans by a 13-point margin, according to a September poll by the New York Times.