Election season is upon us. Former President Donald Trump has taken to attacking his most likely Republican presidential rival, Florida governor Ron Desantis, with Trump saying he regrets endorsing him for governor back in 2017. Now, he’s attacking him dead on.
Trump called the Florida Republican disloyal and said he was the one responsible for Desantis winning in 2018. Trump made the disparaging remarks from his plane on the way to Iowa on Monday, per Politico, where he was getting ready to make a campaign appearance in the state. “He was dead as a dog, he was a dead politician. He would have been working perhaps for a law firm or doing something else,” Trump said, hammering the point home. When asked about the endorsement and whether he regretted giving it, the former president replied, “Yeah maybe, this guy was dead. He was dead as a doornail…I might say that.” Trump apparently didn’t stop there, and spent almost 10 minutes blasting his opponent. He said DeSantis begged him for an endorsement because his campaign was dead on arrival.
“I said ‘You are so dead right now, you are not going, no endorsement is going to save you. George Washington won’t save you.’ He said, ‘I’m telling you, if you endorse me, I have a chance,’” Trump said.
Why did Trump endorse Desantis? He said it was because Desantis defended him when he was being investigated for asking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate President Joe Biden’s family. DeSantis, for his part, heavily campaigned on his undying support of Trump, who conceded that DeSantis was his most formidable opponent in the upcoming election. While Trump’s team is actively searching for weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the DeSantis campaign, the former president said he did have one line he wouldn’t cross — calling DeSantis “Meatball Ron,” saying it was “too crude.”
The Florida governor has been busy on a tour promoting his new book, The Courage to Be Free, which is a common tactic for politicians who run for U.S. president. He’s yet to openly attack Trump, and when asked to respond to Trump’s comments, a spokesperson said that he doesn’t waste time on “trying to smear other Republicans.”
Trump doesn’t adhere to such policy. He also commented on his former vice president Mike Pence, who has taken to attacking Trump head-on over the notorious Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“President Trump was wrong,” Pence said. “I had no right to overturn the election, and his reckless words endangered my family and everyone at the Capitol that day, and I know that history will hold Donald Trump accountable.”
The former president had a predictably measured response to this. “I heard his statement, and I guess he decided that being nice isn’t working because he’s at 3 percent in the polls, so he figured he might as well not be nice any longer.”