Former President Donald Trump broke cover Thursday evening and insisted that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rule himself out of the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, describing his potential rival as an “average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations.”
“Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the long run,’” Trump said in a tantrum issued from his Save America PAC, reprising a nickname for DeSantis trialed at a Nov. 5 rally in Pennsylvania. “Well, by way of loyalty and sophistication, that’s really not the appropriate answer.”
The forty fifth president, who was lampooned as “Trumpty Dumpty” on the front page of Thursday’s Post after his handpicked candidates struggled in essentially the most crucial of Tuesday’s midterm elections, took credit for DeSantis’ rise to the Florida governorship and suggested that weather was the actual reason for the 44-year-old’s popularity.
“Governor Ron DeSanctimonious,” the previous president said, “a mean REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations, who didn’t need to close up his State, but did, unlike other Republican Governors, whose overall numbers for a Republican, were just average—middle of the pack—including COVID, and who has the advantage of SUNSHINE, where people from badly run States up North would go regardless of who the Governor was, similar to I did!”
The previous president, whose divisive intervention within the midterms is being blamed for independents turning decisively against Republican candidates, alleged that DeSantis “got here to me in desperate shape in 2017—he was politically dead, losing in a landslide” in Florida’s GOP gubernatorial primary.
“Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I’d Endorse him, he could win … I said, ‘Let’s give it a shot, Ron,’” Trump said. “Once I Endorsed him, it was as if, to make use of a nasty term, a nuclear weapon went off.”
Prior to Trump’s June 2018 tweet, during which he issued his “full endorsement” of DeSantis, the previous congressman was trailing Florida Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam in quite a few polls. The endorsement propelled DeSantis ahead of Putnam within the polls by as much as 19 points lower than a month later. DeSantis won the first by a snug margin in August 2018.
Trump went on to say that he had “stopped” DeSantis’ first election win over Democrat Andrew Gillum from “being stolen” before complaining concerning the Florida governor’s noncommittal answers a few potential White House run. There isn’t a evidence that ballot theft occurred in Florida’s 2018 governor’s race.
DeSantis, who won re-election by almost 20 percentage points Tuesday night over Democrat Charlie Crist, had no immediate response to Trump, as an alternative tweeting a warning about proper generator use as Tropical Storm Nicole lashed the Sunshine State.
Trump-backed candidates didn’t perform nearly in addition to DeSantis did on Tuesday night, or whilst well as other Republicans in their very own states without Trump’s seal of approval.
In Georgia, Trump-endorsed college football legend Herschel Walker, unable to muster 50% of the vote, appears to be headed to a runoff in his Senate race against incumbent Democrat Rafael Warnock. Gov. Brian Kemp, nonetheless, decisively defeated Stacey Abrams within the Peach State with out a Trump endorsement and even after the previous president’s super PAC spent $500,000 attacking him within the primaries.
In Recent Hampshire, GOP Gov. Chris Sununu, who earlier this 12 months called Trump “f—ing crazy,” easily won his re-election bid, by greater than 15 points, with out a Trump endorsement. In contrast, Don Bolduc, a pro-Trump former general who has expressed skepticism concerning the results of the 2020 election, lost his Senate race to Democratic incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassen by 9 points.
Within the swing state of Pennsylvania, Trump-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano lost by 13 percentage points to Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro. Dr. Mehmet Oz did marginally higher in his Senate race against Lt. Gov. John Fetterman but still lost by 3 points. The difference between the 2 Trump-backed candidates was Oz’s reluctance to advertise the previous president’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen, like Mastriano did.
Many within the GOP have pinned the blame on Trump for these losses and don’t wish to see him on the Republican presidential campaign ticket in 2024.
“I will surely prefer to see the party move forward. There are plenty of rising stars,” Congressman-elect Mike Lawler — who flipped Recent York’s seventeenth Congressional District — told The Post.
Former House Speaker Paul Ryan also blasted Trump after the midterms, calling him a “drag on our ticket.”
“I feel we’re going to need to do plenty of soul-searching and head-scratching, searching through and parsing the numbers as to why we didn’t perform in addition to we’d have liked to,” Ryan told Wisconsin TV station WISN on Wednesday.
“I feel Trump’s sort of a drag on our ticket,” he continued, adding that Trump “gives us problems, politically.”
“I feel we just have some Trump hangover. I feel he’s a drag on our office, on our races,” Ryan said.
Virginia’s Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears also said Thursday that she “couldn’t support” a 2024 presidential run by Trump.
“I couldn’t support him. I just couldn’t,” Sears told Fox’s Neil Cavuto.
“The voters have spoken, and so they’ve said they need a unique leader,” added Sears, a former US Marine.
Even Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, looked as if it would suggest that his former boss’s politicking tactics aren’t working.
“Conservatives are elected once we deliver. Not once we just rail on social media,” Pompeo tweeted shortly after Trump’s Truth Social rant.
“That’s how we are able to win. We fight for families and a robust America.”