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Gov. Ron DeSantis is increasingly on the ropes against former President Donald Trump, who is claiming congressional endorsements and polling victories as his campaign tries to stop Mr. DeSantis from officially entering the presidential race.
Those close to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign say his team is moving aggressively to diminish the popular Florida governor and crush his undeclared candidacy to dissuade him from running against Mr. Trump for the GOP nomination.
“They want to keep a foot on his throat,” a GOP strategist with close ties to the Trump campaign told The Washington Times. “They want to freeze DeSantis out of the race.”
The Trump team is rattled by the Florida governor, who has been on a weeks-long shadow-campaign blitz following his historic, double-digit reelection win in November.
Trump campaign aides are saturating social media with jabs at Mr. DeSantis. They are promoting Mr. Trump’s soaring poll number and his cascade of endorsements. The Trump-aligned super PAC, MAGA Inc., is attacking the Florida governor on the airwaves in an ad depicting him as a puddling-slurping politician who wants to slash Social Security benefits.
The claim has been refuted by a DeSantis-aligned PAC.
While the 44-year-old GOP rising star has yet to declare a 2024 presidential run and won’t likely do so until May, Mr. DeSantis is blazing a path through critical early voting and general election battleground states as he dips his toe into national retail politicking and gauges support.
His backers say Mr. Trump’s attacks are a signal that Mr. DeSantis is a serious threat to the former president’s quest for a second White House term.
“Trump is spending millions of dollars on a guy who’s not even in the race,” Erin Perine, the spokeswoman for the new DeSantis Super PAC Never Back Down, told The Times. “What does that tell you? They see that the governor is strong. They know that the governor is good at building coalitions. Look at the votes that he got in ‘22 in the midterm. He has changed the political landscape in Florida. Of course, the Trump team is going to be scared of that. That’s why they are obsessed with a guy who’s not even a candidate at this point. They are obsessed with him.”
Mr. DeSantis has traveled to Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Texas, among other states, and had speaking engagements on Wednesday in Charleston and Spartanburg, South Carolina.
