Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took direct shots at the competence and character of Donald Trump — his likely rival for the '24 GOP nomination — after months of brushing off the former president's taunts.

• "It's not important for me to be fighting with people on social media," DeSantis said during an interview for "Piers Morgan Uncensored" on the streaming service Fox Nation (via N.Y. Post).

Why it matters: DeSantis, who has dipped in polls amid Trump attacks, knew there was rising risk in remaining a sitting duck while his constituent Donald Trump rampages inside Mar-a-Lago.

"[T]he way we run the government, I think, is no daily drama," DeSantis told Morgan, who was visiting Florida from London.

• Asked about conduct in a leader, DeSantis said: "You really want to look to people like our founding fathers ... [I]t's not saying that you don't ever make a mistake in your personal life. But I think: What type of character are you bringing?"

Much of this is subtly previewed in DeSantis' new book, "The Courage to Be Free." N.Y. Times columnist Carlos Lozada writes that DeSantis' case against Trump is scattered throughout the pages: "You just need to squint through a magnifying glass to find it."

• "I placed loyalty to the cause over loyalty to me," DeSantis writes. "I had no desire to be flattered."

🥊 Reality check: DeSantis' is shifting gears just as many top Republicans — even some possible '24 rivals — are rallying to Trump ahead of his expected indictment.

• Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told me DeSantis risks making himself "unpalatable for many looking to 2028 and beyond."

DeSantis appears to be trying to hit just hard enough to get under the skin of Trump, who's still calling him "Ron DeSanctimonious."

• "I don't know how to spell the 'sanctimonious' one," the honors Yale grad told Piers Morgan. "I don't really know what it means ... [I]t's got a lot of vowels."

DeSantis told Morgan: "If I were to run ... I'm running against Biden."

• Asked if he could beat Biden, the governor said: "I think so."

DeSantis, noting his strength with independents in his November re-election blowout, said: "[T]hat will be the same formula that we would take ... You can’t win with just Republicans."

• Go deeper: "DeSantis opens Pandora's box," by Zachary Basu.

Editor's note: This item has been updated to drop a Fauci-related quote.

Walk into any bank branch in America, and you will likely see a sign that says, in big letters, "FDIC" — that would be the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation — and "each depositor insured to at least $250,000."

• The "at least" part is taking on new meaning as a banking crisis unfurls, Axios Macro co-author Neil Irwin writes.

Why it matters: The Biden administration and financial regulators are sending every possible signal that no U.S. bank depositors — even those with more than the $250,000 federal insurance cap specified in federal law — will lose money in a bank failure.

• They're trying to avert a cascading series of bank runs if people withdraw their money from smaller banks en masse.
• But in the process, they are setting a precedent with potentially long-lasting consequences and thin legal authority.

🥊 Reality check: Technically speaking, there's no formal FDIC insurance for any deposits over $250,000 right now.

State of play: Ten days ago, the government invoked a "systemic risk exception" to guarantee all depositors in Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

• Officials have been not-so-subtly suggesting they won't allow large depositors in any banks to lose cash.
• In a speech yesterday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen emphasized that "similar actions" could be warranted if smaller banks face runs — opening the possibility of even community banks receiving implicit backing.

🖼️ The big picture: The cap on deposit insurance is a long-standing feature of U.S. banking regulation. To abandon it, especially without explicit congressional authorization, opens up a world of issues.

• It could create a "moral hazard" issue, in which banks can take extreme risks without the discipline created by large depositors being wary of loss.

The bottom line: If you have big deposits at a U.S. bank, you're probably safe.

• But U.S. actions over the past 10 days have opened a can of worms involving how the nation's banking system will work in the future.

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The U.S. government's threat to ban TikTok takes aim at what has become the most popular smartphone app in the country, Axios Media Trends expert Sara Fischer reports.

• Why it matters: TikTok's scale presents an enormous challenge to lawmakers trying to argue that the app's national security threat outweighs the wishes of millions of people and businesses using the app.

The TikTok app has been downloaded more times in the U.S. than any other social app since it merged with U.S. lip-syncing app Musical.ly in August 2018, according to Apptopia data.

• The app is expected to generate $11 billion+ in U.S. ad revenue by 2024 — far outpacing rivals Snapchat, Pinterest and Twitter, per eMarketer.

🔮 What's next: TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew highlights the app's growth in remarks prepared for his first-ever congressional testimony tomorrow. The testimony was released last night by the House committee he will address.

• The company counts more than 150 million monthly active users in the U.S., up from 100 million users in 2020, executives confirmed to Axios.
• Chew yesterday posted a TikTok video touting the app's reach, asserting that 5 million U.S. businesses — a majority of which are small- or medium-size — use TikTok to get to their customers.

🔎 Between the lines: The video is part of a broader consumer campaign that the short-video platform is beginning to push, amid growing efforts by federal and state governments to limit or ban the app.

• TikTok is appealing to users directly in the app. "Some politicians have started to talk about banning TikTok," Chew says in the video. "Now this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you."

Share this story ... Read the 10-page testimony.

Mindy Kaling, Bruce Springsteen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus were among stars honored by President Biden with National Medals of Arts at a pandemic-delayed ceremony yesterday.

• Full list of honorees.

Google has started allowing some users in the U.S. and U.K. to start accessing the experimental version of Bard, its ChatGPT rival, Axios chief tech correspondent Ina Fried reports.

• Why it matters: Companies are rushing to incorporate generative AI into their products both to show leadership and to gather the feedback needed to rapidly improve such products, which are prone to making up facts.

🧠 How it works: Bard is similar to ChatGPT in that users can type in text and receive responses to a wide range of queries.

• Google says Bard in many cases will offer three options, or "drafts," of its answer to a particular prompt. It will also show a button to "Google it."

What you can do: Bard waitlist is available here.

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"A strong China is bolstering a weak Russia. That’s the real headline that describes the showy meetings in Moscow this week between the two countries' leaders," Washington Post columnist David Ignatius writes:

Pentagon strategists have always divided the world into East and West, with U.S. regional forces under European Command or Indo-Pacific Command. But ... you wonder whether we may need a single 'Eurasian Command' to handle an integrated threat.

The bottom line: "If you were looking for another reason why it's important that Ukraine succeeds against Russia, consider the photos from Moscow," Ignatius writes.

• "'The President of Eurasia' — I fear that's the invisible caption of the pictures of Xi ... amid the Kremlin's golden doors and red carpets."

Read the column.

The work-from-home revolution is finally starting to lower office-building rental rates, Matt Phillips writes for Axios Markets.

• San Francisco and Manhattan, with long commutes, have been hit the hardest.
• Rents are holding up or even rising in Raleigh, Boston and Minneapolis, which have a higher concentration of health services, biotech and life science employment. It's hard to do lab research from your home office.

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The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus has been reborn without animals as a high-octane event with highwire tricks, soaring trapeze artists and bicycles leaping on trampolines.

• The show — a complete rethink of a modern circus — goes on tour in September, AP's Mark Kennedy writes.

🐘 The circus took down its tents in 2017 after years of declining ticket sales as customers became conflicted about the treatment of circus animals.

• Keep reading.