Donald Trump has declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination. Nikki Haley has, as well. Vivek Ramaswamy jumped in after that. We’re still expecting the likes of Ron DeSantis, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, and others to hop into the race, too.

For his part, it looks like Trump is prepping for a major offensive against DeSantis, with Axios reporting that the Trump team has a five-point plan to deploy against DeSantis in the coming weeks.

Between the lines: Trump plans to target “Ron DeSanctimonious,” as he delights in branding the governor, in five areas. They are:

1. DeSantis’ past support for changes to Social Security and Medicare, including votes as a U.S. congressman to raise the eligibility age for Medicare.
2. Disloyalty to Trump after he helped DeSantis get elected governor in 2018. Trump also plans to pound DeSantis on likability.
3. Trump wants to cast DeSantis as a lackey of former House Speaker Paul Ryan. On Trump’s social-media site, Truth Social, he attacked Ryan this week as a loser who “couldn’t get elected dogcatcher,” and said he should resign or be fired as a Fox Corp. board member.
4. DeSantis’ response to COVID is a top Trump target, even though the governor is known for resisting mask mandates. Trump plans to attack DeSantis’ caution in the earliest days of the pandemic — and try to fight the issue to a draw. A March 2020 headline in the Tampa Bay Times said: “DeSantis orders major shutdown of beaches, businesses in Broward, Palm Beach.” (DeSantis pushes back on this.)
5. DeSantis took heat for muddled comments, in a Fox News interview last week, about whether to maintain financial and military support for Ukraine. Trump plans to portray DeSantis as wishy-washy on the war, while he toes the MAGA line of cutting aid.

That will make for some interesting debating going forward, but none of the candidates or potential candidates have really responded to Trump in any way. So it’s impossible to tell if these attacks will land, either. What we do know, however, is that the Republican base does seem to be trying to figure out whether Trump should stay or go. Multiple polls are showing Trump gaining momentum.

• A new Yahoo News/YouGov poll has Trump opening up an 8-point lead on DeSantis (47%-39%), after DeSantis led the former president by 4 in the pollster’s previous survey at the beginning of February.
• The GOP polling firm Echelon Insights found Trump leading DeSantis by 15 points (46%-31%) on a national ballot test. Last month, the pollster found Trump only leading DeSantis by 2 points (36%-34%).
• Fox News’ first presidential primary poll, testing the GOP presidential ballot, found Trump leading DeSantis by 15 points (43%-28%).

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