Ex-President Donald Trump’s attempt to keep Florida’s fast-rising Republican governor Ron DeSantis out of the White House race in 2024 tells as much about his own worldview and the obstacles his campaign faces as it does about Florida’s fast-rising Republican governor.
During his first two-state campaign trip of his fresh White House effort – to early voting New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday – Trump lashed out at DeSantis, who has yet to make a run. The trip occurred as the lost 2020 GOP contender faced mounting doubts about his ability to reclaim control of the Republican Party, and it followed negative press about his low-energy start to his third presidential campaign. Some major party leaders are unconvinced that he can win a general election after his frequently disastrous interventions in swing states during last year’s midterm elections.
Trump’s return to the campaign trail left no question that DeSantis is on his mind, and he expressed annoyance with criticism of his campaign thus far.
There was also something odd about a previous president who sought to steal the last election and incited an insurgency to keep power campaigning and being accepted by followers as if nothing had occurred.
There is also a strong sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and that certain members of his party are not sufficiently appreciative of his chaotic one-term presidency.
Trump implied that DeSantis owed him money for helping him win the Republican governorship in 2018 and for his employment in the governor’s house in Tallahassee. As a result, he hinted that DeSantis should abandon his presidential quest.
“So when I hear he’s planning to flee, I consider it terribly disloyal. But it’s not about loyalty – but it is for me, it’s always about loyalty – but it’s not about loyalty for a lot of people,” Trump told reporters, including AWN’s Kristen Holmes, aboard his plane this weekend.
True, Trump’s backing in his first gubernatorial election aided DeSantis, who adopted Trump’s culture war politics and “Make America Great Again”-style grievances against political elites. Against the same time, DeSantis has created his own powerful brand and adopted many Trump-style measures in schools and companies aimed at what he terms the “far left-woke agenda” that the former president never addressed on a national level during his presidency. He also just won reelection by over 20 points, considerably exceeding Trump’s performance in Florida in 2020. So, while Trump aided DeSantis’ campaign, the Florida governor has emerged as a potent GOP figure in his own right.
Trump’s views on loyalty recall his earlier this month attack on evangelical leaders, whom he called “disloyal” for declining to endorse his 2024 run despite his delivery of a generational conservative Supreme Court majority. The remarks underscored Trump’s transactional approach to politics, as well as the fact that a leader who fired advisers, employees, and Cabinet members at an alarming rate while in office frequently views loyalty as a one-way street.
DeSantis gets a taste of the future.
DeSantis is anticipated to spend the next few months solidifying his position as a rising GOP star by pushing his hard-core conservative agenda through the Republican-controlled state legislature, a tactic that will likely postpone any announcement. However, Trump’s criticisms indicate that if he does enter the race, DeSantis can face the same savage filleting of his record and character that Trump brought to bear on opponents such as another (former) Florida governor, Jeb Bush, during the 2016 election.
For example, the ex-president hammered in on one of DeSantis’ greatest points for many conservative voters: his frequent opposition to federal Covid-19 regulations and recommendations. Trump, on the other hand, accused the DeSantis campaign of attempting to “rewrite history” regarding his epidemic record. “Some Republican governors did not close their states,” Trump said to reporters. “Florida was shut down for a long time.”
DeSantis did close bars and nightclubs and asked residents to heed federal government recommendations on limiting beach gatherings in March 2020. But, by September, he had approved them to reopen, contradicting federal government health inspectors. Despite spending much of the last two years feuding with the Biden administration over the pandemic, the former president is clearly attempting to move to the right of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on this subject. While defying federal health warnings could be a strong litmus test in a GOP primary, the notion that Trump’s catastrophic management of the pandemic could be a vote winner in the general election is a big leap.
Nonetheless, Trump’s practised jabs at DeSantis underscore some of the key issues confronting the Florida governor.
While DeSantis appears to be a powerful potential contender on paper, he would need to have the ability to defend himself against Trump’s deadly debate stage broadsides, as well as a verbal nimbleness that he hasn’t yet demonstrated. He’d also have to fend off Trump without alienating portions of the Republican base that still have almost mythological love to the former president.
Several surveys have indicated that Trump’s control on the Republican Party is eroding and that DeSantis is gaining momentum. A survey issued last week by the University of New Hampshire in the nation’s first primary state saw the Florida governor leading Trump 42% to 30% among probable GOP voters in the state. According to a December AWN/SSRS poll, over six in ten Republicans and Republican-leaning independents preferred their party to select someone other than Trump in 2024.
New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told AWN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that DeSantis is currently the favourite to win the Granite State’s Republican primary. Sununu, who told Bash he’s thinking about running for president in 2024, also criticised Trump’s tone and the scale of his event, which was an address to party activists rather than one of his fiery rallies in a state where he won the GOP primary in 2016.
“He arrives to New Hampshire and, to be honest, gives a fairly banal speech. “From what we’ve heard, he read his teleprompter, stuck to the talking points, and then left,” Sununu told Bash. “So he’s not really bringing that fire, that energy, that a lot of people witnessed in ’16. In many ways, I believe it was disappointing to certain people. … So I believe a lot of people recognise that he’ll be a candidate, but he’ll have to earn it. That is New Hampshire.”
Trump, based on his comments about DeSantis and evangelical groups, does not appear to be ready to accept that reality. Though his late-day visit to an ice cream parlour in South Carolina was an unique dive into retail politics and first-person interaction with people.