Nate Monroe: Florida men Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are having one rotten week

COMMENTARY | The most Florida man to ever walk the Earth was charged Tuesday with the most Florida scheme: a tawdry fraud case centered on the alleged Apprentice-era indiscretions of Donald J. Trump, the former United States president with a penchant for porn stars and who once cited "two Corinthians" as his favorite Bible verse. And so the ex-president was summoned from his South Florida pleasure palace to a grim Manhattan courthouse to confront criminal charges accusing him of falsifying business records to obscure hush-money payments he hoped would paper over his past deviances.

Yet Trump's fortunes, as ever, appear not quite as dire as they perhaps should be, the gravity-defying dark magic he has conjured throughout a life of prolific fraud and Saturnalia. Maybe the charges are weak, and maybe the polls are right: the indictment makes him more popular with Republicans.

What's the one thing more embarrassing than being the first ex-president charged with a crime? Being the hapless opponent getting trounced by him.

In the span of just a few weeks, during which his still-unannounced-but-very-much-active presidential campaign has taken a nose dive, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems a significantly diminished figure. He is not a mad king but a rather dyspeptic feudal lord, or maybe the tinpot dictator of a hermit land. Whatever he is, DeSantis is most definitely not, at the moment, the hulking juggernaut in Republican presidential politics.

He is the second Florida man of the week, and despite not being charged with any crimes, he can't seem to outpace his indictment-plagued political godfather.

As Trump delights in reminding the world, the former president made DeSantis — with a single tweet, reversed the fortunes of the obscure Northeast Florida congressman and helped him defeat the all-but-anointed Republican gubernatorial nominee.

For a while, DeSantis returned the favor with off-putting submissiveness: remember the ad? Yeah, that one. He picked the fights Trump wanted to pick, and he imbued Florida government with all of Trump's ghoulish cruelty. He punches down like Trump and shies away from symmetrical conflict just like Trump. And when Trump's coup failed and he needed friendly refuge, it was in DeSantis' Florida where Trump settled into his restless exile.

But DeSantis was not satisfied within the confines of Florida, and in his mission to make the governor's mansion the center of resistance in the Biden era, it became clear he had higher ambitions.

For all his mimicry, though, DeSantis is apparently unable to see in the failings of his peers a crucial lesson: Trumpism doesn't work without Trump anymore than ice cream works without the cream. It is a personality cult — not a policy project or a coherent ideology. Trump is its beginning and its end.

The derivative doesn't work, and as a derivative, DeSantis is flawed. He lacks Trump's showmanship and the impish magnetism his followers find irresistible. Trump is bawdy; DeSantis is just plain old awkward. Trump dominates the debate stage; DeSantis shrinks on it. Trump delights in public appearances; DeSantis usually looks pained or bored.

Strangest of all, DeSantis' presidential campaign has apparently decided on a strategy that involves allowing Trump to waylay the governor at will while the governor offers no response in kind. And when news broke about Trump's grand jury indictment last week, DeSantis rushed to his defense like a loyal toady, vowing to refuse extradition — in case there was any doubt where each lives on the food chain.

DeSantis' entire rationale as a candidate centers on the idea that he is a fighter. He dressed up in a pilot costume once to emphasize this very point. And then Trump exploded it all in just a few weeks — meatball, groomer, DeSanctimonious. The governor doesn't look like a fighter. He looks like a squish too enfeebled to stand up for himself.

And it is in this struggle that the aloof DeSantis is actually at his most relatable: his worst nightmare is a Florida man named Donald J. Trump.

Nate Monroe is a metro columnist whose work regularly appears every Thursday and Sunday. Follow him on Twitter @NateMonroeTU.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Nate Monroe: Trump, DeSantis, two Florida men, having one very bad week