Donald Trump is venting his frustration with Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) in private ahead of a potential matchup for the Republican party nomination for president in 2024, Axios reports.
DeSantis is the clear favorite among Republican voters for the party nomination for president in 2024 when Trump is removed from the equation. The governor’s rising popularity is starting to rub Trump the wrong way especially since DeSantis has not ruled out running against him for the nomination.
A source who has spoken with Trump about DeSantis told Axios that the reason the former president is irritated with the governor’s popularity is “Ron DeSantis won’t say he won’t run [in 2024]…the others have stated pretty clearly they won’t challenge him.”
Another source said Trump claims he isn’t worried about DeSantis beating him in a primary because the governor “has no personal charisma and has a dull personality.”
Trump has long held the view that DeSantis would not have been governor without his endorsement in 2018 and he has not been grateful.
Trump’s private frustration with DeSantis is beginning to seep out in public. In an OANN interview recently, he blasted the “gutless” Republican politicians who refuse to say whether they have been boosted.
Though Trump did not identify any politician by name DeSantis has repeatedly dodged questions about his vaccination status.
Asked if he had received the booster by Fox News in December, DeSantis said, “So, I’ve done whatever I did … The normal shot, and that at the end of the day is people’s individual decisions about what they want to do.”
DeSantis appeared to have subtly fire back at Trump during an interview on the ‘Ruthless’ podcast saying he wished he had pushed back “much louder” against lockdowns early on in the pandemic, around March 2020 when Trump was still in the White House.
