(Trends Wide) — On the campaign trail over the weekend, Donald Trump gave us all a sneak peek at how he would compete against Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential race.
Alluding to his lead over the other potential Republican 2024 candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump referred to the Florida governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
Which was no accident. Trump and DeSantis have been in something of a cold war for months.
“If I faced him, I would beat him like I would beat everyone else,” Trump told Yahoo Finance in October 2021 of DeSantis. “I think most people would retire, I think he would retire.”
Last month, Trump called it a “BIG MISTAKE” when DeSantis recorded a robocall for Republican Colorado Senate candidate Joe O’Dea. The politician had drawn Trump’s ire by saying in an interview with Trends Wide’s Dana Bash that he would “actively” oppose the former president if he ran for the White House in 2024.
DeSantis, for his part, has not paid the kind of bow to Trump that the former president is used to receiving from Republican politicians. DeSantis did not seek Trump’s endorsement of his 2022 re-election bid, and over the weekend the two men held rallies on the eve of the general election in Florida. (At his rally in Florida this Sunday, Trump avoided criticizing DeSantis.)
DeSantis appears to everyone to be preparing to use the momentum gained from his expected victory on Tuesday to launch a White House bid. Last week he released a video that could easily have doubled as a presidential ad and Politico noted that DeSantis raised $200 million for his re-election bid and had more than $90 million in the bank.
So assuming DeSantis does run for president, how would Trump compete against him?
Well, the nickname “DeSanctimonious” actually goes back to how Trump tried to take down Ted Cruz, his main rival for the 2016 Republican nomination.
In that race, Trump argued that Cruz was sanctimonious, insisting that while the Texas senator portrayed himself as an honest competitor and a man of God, he was actually something less.
“I think it’s going to go down,” Trump said of Cruz in February 2016. “I think a guy can’t be … I’m a Christian, but you know Ted holds the Bible and then lies about so many things.”
It would seem, then, that Trump would be repeating the playbook he used against Cruz in his potential fight with DeSantis. The idea is to undermine the notion of DeSantis as a principled conservative by portraying him as someone who talks down to average people and thinks he’s better than them.
Trump, in this formulation, is the true man of the people, who would never dare to think that he is better than anyone else. (The fact that Trump has an oversized ego and routinely presents himself as someone special seems to slip into this equation.)
Whether DeSantis runs for president, and how he would run, remains a completely open question. But what is clear is that Trump is already beginning to position himself against DeSantis, even before the 2022 election is over.
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(Trends Wide) — On the campaign trail over the weekend, Donald Trump gave us all a sneak peek at how he would compete against Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential race.
Alluding to his lead over the other potential Republican 2024 candidate at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, Trump referred to the Florida governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious.”
Which was no accident. Trump and DeSantis have been in something of a cold war for months.
“If I faced him, I would beat him like I would beat everyone else,” Trump told Yahoo Finance in October 2021 of DeSantis. “I think most people would retire, I think he would retire.”
Last month, Trump called it a “BIG MISTAKE” when DeSantis recorded a robocall for Republican Colorado Senate candidate Joe O’Dea. The politician had drawn Trump’s ire by saying in an interview with Trends Wide’s Dana Bash that he would “actively” oppose the former president if he ran for the White House in 2024.
DeSantis, for his part, has not paid the kind of bow to Trump that the former president is used to receiving from Republican politicians. DeSantis did not seek Trump’s endorsement of his 2022 re-election bid, and over the weekend the two men held rallies on the eve of the general election in Florida. (At his rally in Florida this Sunday, Trump avoided criticizing DeSantis.)
DeSantis appears to everyone to be preparing to use the momentum gained from his expected victory on Tuesday to launch a White House bid. Last week he released a video that could easily have doubled as a presidential ad and Politico noted that DeSantis raised $200 million for his re-election bid and had more than $90 million in the bank.
So assuming DeSantis does run for president, how would Trump compete against him?
Well, the nickname “DeSanctimonious” actually goes back to how Trump tried to take down Ted Cruz, his main rival for the 2016 Republican nomination.
In that race, Trump argued that Cruz was sanctimonious, insisting that while the Texas senator portrayed himself as an honest competitor and a man of God, he was actually something less.
“I think it’s going to go down,” Trump said of Cruz in February 2016. “I think a guy can’t be … I’m a Christian, but you know Ted holds the Bible and then lies about so many things.”
It would seem, then, that Trump would be repeating the playbook he used against Cruz in his potential fight with DeSantis. The idea is to undermine the notion of DeSantis as a principled conservative by portraying him as someone who talks down to average people and thinks he’s better than them.
Trump, in this formulation, is the true man of the people, who would never dare to think that he is better than anyone else. (The fact that Trump has an oversized ego and routinely presents himself as someone special seems to slip into this equation.)
Whether DeSantis runs for president, and how he would run, remains a completely open question. But what is clear is that Trump is already beginning to position himself against DeSantis, even before the 2022 election is over.
