This past weekend, Former President Donald Trump issued a threatening warning to Ron DeSantis against the kicking off of any presidential primary challenge going against Trump, exclaiming that such a move being carried out by the highly popular Florida politician would be “very disloyal.”
This is not the first time that Trump, who is currently the only major Republican that has publically declared his bid for the 2024 presidential race, has gone after DeSantis, who recently succeeded with his re-election with a landslide margin of over 20 percentage points and who a number of polls show as being the leader in any theoretical presidential primary. In a long series of statements to the media and early morning posts to Truth Social, Trump attempted to claim DeSantis was a “globalist,” and tried to lecture the governor regarding the response from Florida to the COVID lockdowns, all while trying to take credit for his political success.
“Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me,” stated Trump. “So when I hear he might run, I consider that very disloyal.”
DeSantis, who most seem to think is heavily considering his own bid for the Oval Office, has not elected to stoop down to the taunts coming from Trump as he sits high atop the wave of popularity which is rapidly expanding out of the Sunshine State. One recently carried out poll by the University of New Hampshire ended up showing DeSantis leading Trump 42% to 30% across likely Republican voters within the very important state. No other potential challengers for Republicans even made it to double digits.
This attack against DeSantis, who Trump has attempted to rebrand as “Ron DeSanctimonious,” regarding the COVID response from Florida just doesn’t seem to hold much water, especially so given that Florida was one of the very first states to officially reopen and DeSantis has been known to be a strong voice against extended school closings and vaccine mandates.
“Ron DeSanctimonious” did “FAR WORSE than many other Republican governors, including that he unapologetically shut down Florida,” expressed Trump in a social media post.
Despite schools in Florida shutting down for the last Semester of 2020, DeSantis put forth an executive order in March of that year which effectively closed down nightclubs and bars, he chose to rescind those orders after just a six-month period, making him one of the very first to do so and painting him with a target for liberal cable news outlets and Democratic politicians.
The insanely harsh treatment by Trump against Desantis regarding how he dealt with COVID seems to be a highly dramatic departure from what he stated at that time. As part of a press conference on March 31, 2020, Trump labeled DeSantis as a “great Governor” who “knows exactly what he’s doing” in regard to the coronavirus pandemic.
