Former President Donald Trump took to Truth Social Wednesday for a barrage of posts, but one in particular addressed the issue of Ron DeSantis and his presidential plans—if any—for 2024. Trump flat-out told him that he was stomping the Florida Governor in the polls and that he simply shouldn’t run in this cycle:
Ron DeSantis is a young man who is not doing well against me in the polls, to put it mildly. I believe that if he decides to run for President, which will only hurt and somewhat divide the Republican Party, which we don’t need, he will lose the cherished and massive MAGA vote and never be able to successfully run for office again. I believe that.
If he remains governor, which is what Florida voters assumed he would do, it would be a whole different story. Just saying. But who knows?
DeSantis has not announced his intention to run, but in February he embarked on a book tour to promote his tome, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.” As I wrote at the time, “It sure has all the appearances of the first salvo in a presidential campaign.”
It’s no accident the former president started his monologue with the phrase, “Ron DeSantis is a young man…” He’s reminding the governor that he is youthful and could run again in the future, presumably when Trump is no longer in command of the Republican party.
And in command, he is, with polls showing him easily defeating DeSantis in a hypothetical primary. He enjoyed a substantial bump in support among the GOP faithful after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s politically-motivated indictment of Trump on 34 charges of falsifying business records.
Of course, it’s still early in the election season, and there have been no debates and no serious attacks by DeSantis on Trump.
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The short speech took on a more threatening tone in the second sentence, where he basically said that if DeSantis chose to run in the 2024 cycle he would effectively ruin his chances at a political future. “I believe that if he decides to run for President, which will only hurt and somewhat divide the Republican Party, which we don’t need,” Trump said, adding, “he will lose the cherished and massive MAGA vote and never be able to successfully run for office again.” Pretty strong stuff.
The Florida governor is clearly a threat to Trump, however. Social media influencer Ian Miles Cheong pointed out that The Donald has not warned off any other GOP candidates:
Trump tells DeSantis not to run. He hasn’t told Haley, Ramaswamy, or anyone else to step aside. Why? pic.twitter.com/05wEcjU0eV
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) April 19, 2023
Trump fans will likely love this Truth Social post, and say that they admire the real estate executive for being “a fighter.” DeSantis fans will probably be infuriated that Trump is trying to tell their beloved governor what to do. I wrote an op-ed back in June opining that the last thing I wanted to see was the two GOP heavyweights battling against each other because it has the potential to do grave damage to them both and hand the White House back to Joe Biden—which would obviously be an absolute disaster.
It looks like I’m not going to get my wish.
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