Ex-President Donald Trump’s bid to keep Ron DeSantis out of the 2024 White House race reveals as much about his own mindset and the challenges his campaign faces as it does about Florida’s fast-rising Republican governor.
Trump lashed out at DeSantis, who has yet to announce a run, during his first two-state campaign swing of his new White House bid – to early voting New Hampshire and South Carolina on Saturday. The trip came with the defeated 2020 GOP candidate facing rising questions about whether he can recapture his control of the Republican Party and followed bad reviews about the low energy start to his third presidential bid. After his often disastrous interventions in swing-states during last year’s midterm elections, some key party leaders are skeptical he can win a general election.
As he stepped back on the campaign trail, Trump left no doubt that DeSantis is looming large in his mind and betrayed irritation with criticism of his campaign so far.
There was also something jarring about a former president who tried to steal the last election – and incited an insurrection to try to cling to power – campaigning and being embraced by supporters as if nothing happened.
There is also a clear sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and feels that certain sections of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his turbulent one-term presidency.
Trump suggested that DeSantis was in his debt for having helped him capture the GOP nomination for governor in 2018 and for his job in the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. He implied that DeSantis should pass on a White House bid as a result.
“So then when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal. But it’s not about loyalty – but to me it is, it’s always about loyalty – but for a lot of people it’s not about loyalty,” Trump told…
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