Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he’s been particularly harsh in his attacks against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) because he didn’t wait until 2028 to run for president.
Trump, in a speech to supporters in New Hampshire, recounted how he soured on DeSantis over the past year. He explained that he had endorsed and campaigned for DeSantis in his 2018 gubernatorial bid, only for the governor to use his landslide reelection win last November as a springboard to launch his own presidential campaign.
“So that’s why I’ve been particularly hard on him, and fortunately it’s worked because he’s crashing. He doesn’t know what happened,” Trump said.
“You know what he did wrong? He ran. What he did wrong is he should have waited until ‘28,” Trump continued. “But I don’t know if that would have held water because eventually they would have figured out — you know, you do need some personality if you’re going to be a politician. Just a little.”
Trump and his campaign have relentlessly attacked DeSantis on both policy and personality for the past several months as the Florida governor has polled in second place in the vast majority of GOP primary surveys.
The former president cited a slew of recent primary polls that showed him leading DeSantis and other candidates by double digits, including a New York Times/Siena College poll that found Trump polling at 54 percent, with DeSantis in second at 17 percent.
DeSantis has in recent weeks attempted to rejuvenate his campaign by reshuffling its leadership and testing out more direct criticisms of the former president.