Trump calls 2024 ‘rival’ DeSantis ‘very disloyal’

Donald Trump has called Ron DeSantis “very disloyal” for having considered running for the White House.

As Trump kicked off his 2024 bid with stops in New Hampshire and South Carolina, he once again took credit for helping DeSantis run for governor of Florida in 2018.

“Ron wouldn’t have been governor if it wasn’t for me,” Trump told reporters aboard his plane on Saturday. So when I hear that he might run away, I consider it very disloyal.

The former president also criticized DeSantis for shutting down Florida for a “long period of time” during the COVID-19 pandemic when other red states did not, claiming the governor and his team are “trying to rewrite history.”

Trump’s stops in early voting states this weekend marked the first campaign appearances since announcing his latest race more than two months ago.

scroll through video

The former president also criticized DeSantis for shutting down Florida for a “long period of time” during the COVID-19 pandemic when other red states did not.

After his speech in South Carolina, Trump said it would be “a gross act of disloyalty” if DeSantis were to oppose him in the primary and take credit for the initial choice of governor.

‘If he runs, it’s okay. I’m way up in the polls,” Trump said. ‘He’s going to have to do what he wants to do, but he can run away.

“I think it would be a huge act of disloyalty because, you know, I entered it. I had no chance. His political life was over.

Trump initially endorsed DeSantis in the 2018 gubernatorial primary campaign, but said Saturday he hasn’t spoken to him in a long time.

Since then, he has called DeSantis an “average governor” and “Ron DeSanctimonious.” On Saturday, Trump criticized the Florida governor’s COVID response.

“There are Republican governors who did not shut down their states,” Trump told reporters. ‘Florida was shut down for a long period of time. They are trying to rewrite history,” he added.

“I had governors who decided not to shut anything down and that was up to them,” he said, defending his choice to leave it up to the governors of each state.

Trump also criticized DeSantis’ shifting stance on vaccines, saying the Florida governor had “changed his tune a lot.”

While Trump remains the only declared presidential candidate for 2024, potential challengers, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, are expected to begin their campaigns in the next months.

Trump, who initially endorsed DeSantis in the 2018 gubernatorial primary campaign, said it would be “a gross act of disloyalty” if he ran against him in the primary.

Trump’s stops in early voting states this weekend marked the first campaign appearances since announcing his last candidacy. Pictured: Trump announced his third consecutive run for the White House on November 15

Trump told reporters Saturday that Nikki Haley called him recently to inform him that she was considering running for president in 2024.

“I talked to her for a while, I said, ‘Look, you know, follow your heart if you want to run,'” Trump said. “She publicly said that she’d never run me against my president, she was a great president.”

Trump said he told Haley that she “should do it.”

In New Hampshire, Trump touted his campaign agenda, including immigration and crime, and said his policies would run counter to those of President Joe Biden.

He cited the Democrats’ decision to change the electoral calendar, which cost New Hampshire its first primary berth, and accused Biden, who finished fifth in New Hampshire in 2020, of “shamefully trashing this beloved political tradition.” “.

“I hope they remember that during the general election,” Trump told party members. Trump himself won the primaries twice, but he lost the state each time to the Democrats.

Later, in South Carolina, Trump said he planned to keep the state’s presidential primary the “first in the South” and called it “a very important state.”

Trump told reporters Saturday that Nikki Haley called him recently to inform him that she was considering running for president in 2024.

In his speech, he went from criticizing Biden and the Democrats to disparaging comments about transgender people, mocking people who promote electric stoves and electric cars, and recalling efforts while serving as president to increase the oil production, strike trade deals, and break Down on migration at the US-Mexico border.

Trump’s campaign, in its early stages, has already generated controversy, most notably when he dined with Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes and rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who made a series of anti-Semitic remarks. Trump was also widely mocked for selling a series of digital trading cards depicting him as a superhero, a cowboy and an astronaut, among others.

He is the subject of a series of criminal investigations, including one into the discovery of hundreds of classified-marked documents at his Florida club and whether he obstructed justice by refusing to return them, as well as state and federal examinations of his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.

Still, early polls show him to be one of the favorites to win his party’s nomination.