Read the room
Donald Trump kicked off his 2024 campaign for the Republican nomination for president on Saturday in Waco, Texas. Thousands of Trump supporters came to the event, but this isn’t 2015 and many Trump voters have grown tired of his tendency to pepper his campaign speeches heavily with criticism for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. It must have come as a surprise to Trump when he went into a long story that makes DeSantis look weak and needy and the crowd was silent and failed to egg him on.
It is being reported that few people in the audience reacted to Trump’s version of a story that has him endorsing Ron DeSantis for governor in his first gubernatorial campaign after DeSantis came to him for an endorsement. Trump claims DeSantis was crying and begging for an endorsement. The audience didn’t respond as they did when Trump criticized others, like the media, so he quickly changed course and began boasting that he is ahead in all the national polls for the Republican nomination.
“So, he came, and he really wanted [my endorsement]. I said, ‘You can’t win, can you? How do you – can [you] win?’” Trump said, recalling the alleged conversation with DeSantis. “‘Sir, if you endorse me, I’ll win. Please, please, sir, endorse me,’” Trump continued as he acted out a crying, begging voice.
“He gets the nomination because of you. He wins the election because of you. Two years later, the fake … is up there saying, ‘Will you run against the president? Will you run?’ And he says, ‘I have no comment,’” Trump said after arguing that DeSantis was virtually dead in the race before his endorsement.
Trump went after DeSantis for his handling of COVID-19, arguing that other states did not shut down as Florida did at the beginning of the pandemic, and blasted the Florida governor’s record of attempting to slash Social Security benefits while a member of Congress.
Trump must think his rants against DeSantis make him look like a power broker.
