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A spokesperson for former President Donald Trump is ripping Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as an "off-brand version" of Trump after he mirrored the ex-president's criticism of the term "woke."
DeSantis, Trump's chief GOP rival in the 2024 presidential primary race, said that many who "rail against wokeness can't even define it" during a Tuesday interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, despite having made the issue the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
Trump, who has also followed the recent Republican trend of denouncing "woke" issues in politics, made very similar comments in Iowa on June 1, telling supporters that he did not "like" the term woke because "half the people can't even define it, they don't know what it is."
The remarks from DeSantis came after Tapper confronted the governor with survey results that suggest wokeness is not a pressing concern among potential military recruits. DeSantis had recently vowed to "rip woke out of the military."
"Well, I think there's an issue about ... Not everyone really knows what wokeness is," DeSantis said in response to the CNN host. "I mean, I've defined it, but a lot of people who rail against wokeness can't even define it."
In a statement to Newsweek, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said that DeSantis' comments were an example of him "stealing President Trump's messaging."
"Ron DeSantis doesn't have an original thought in that minor league brain of his, so that's why he's been stealing President Trump's messaging and policy ideas from Day One," Cheung said.
"He's nothing more than a mid, off-brand version of MAGA that can only dream about being President Trump," he added.
Newsweek reached out online to the DeSantis campaign for comment on Tuesday.
DeSantis' crusade against "woke ideology" has included the introduction of the "Stop Woke Act" and other "anti-woke" bills in Florida. He announced that his state was "where woke goes to die" after being reelected to a second term as governor last year. The governor's anti-woke rhetoric has only ramped up since he entered the presidential race this year.
While definitions of "woke" vary, the term has become a culture war buzzword among the political right in recent years. It is often used as a catchall word to describe political positions or issues of which conservatives do not approve.
DeSantis described the term as "a form of cultural Marxism" to NBC correspondent Dasha Burns one day after Trump denounced it in Iowa, arguing that it was "about putting merit and achievement behind identity politics" and "basically a war on the truth."
Ryan Newman, the governor's general counsel, provided a very different definition of the word during a court hearing last year, calling it "the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them," according to Florida Politics.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines "woke" as being "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)."
"It originated in African American English and gained more widespread use beginning in 2014 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement," the dictionary states. "By the end of that same decade it was also being applied by some as a general pejorative for anyone who is or appears to be politically left-leaning."
Update 7/19/23, 7 a.m. ET: The headline on this article was updated.
About the writer
Aila Slisco is a Newsweek night reporter based in New York. Her focus is on reporting national politics, where she ... Read more