After former President Donald Trump rolled out his “Ron DeSanctimonious” nickname, Trump supporters appeared to be trying to fend off a potential battle with DeSantis for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
At a Trump rally Monday in Ohio, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., called it “political suicide” to challenge Trump in 2024.
“We need strong Republican governors to fight, stay in for eight years and save their states, not to abandon their states and try to run for president or any other big position,” Greene said during an interview with Right Side Broadcasting Network. “My message is, for everyone, anyone that’s considering running for president in 2024 against President Trump, please support President Trump.”
In a separate interview on the same network, attorney Alina Habba, a senior adviser to Trump’s political action committee, told DeSantis to “stay in Florida.”
“Just stay where you are. You are doing a great job in Florida,” Habba said.
Trump, meanwhile, implied that he has dirty laundry about DeSantis.
“If he runs, he could hurt himself very badly,” Trump said in a Fox News interview. “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering — I know more about him than anybody, other than, perhaps, his wife.”
Speculation has long swirled around DeSantis as a potential 2024 presidential candidate — speculation further fueled by his dominant re-election win Tuesday.
In a last-day campaign ad, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist tried to play up the Trump-DeSantis “rift” with a spot saying, “President Trump doesn’t have Ron DeSantis’ back. Why should you?”
In what looked like a case of double-dog dare, Cenk Uygur, creator of the progressive news site The Young Turks, tweeted Wednesday that, “at this point,” DeSantis “would have to be a coward not to run in 2024.”
“Republicans and right-wing media are handing it to him on a silver platter,” Uygur continued. “Opportunities like this are not guaranteed, four years from now, or ever. It would be extraordinary weakness to turn it down.”
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