Former President Donald Trump continued his contempt of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for having broken political loyalty by running against him in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.
"The reason I don't like him is because I got him elected," Trump said in a stump speech in Windham, New Hampshire, on Tuesday.
"He was no Jim Jordan – that I can tell you."
Trump knew the writing was on the wall when DeSantis gave a "no comment" to questions about "would you run against the president?"
"What? Did he say that," Trump said, regaling his supporters on his oft-repeated story of DeSantis breaking from him.
"Now, to me, that means he's running," Trump continued. "So I said, 'that son of a b*tch is running.' Can you believe it? I just got him elected.
"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."
DeSantis should have waited until the 2028 election, Trump added.
"'What did I do wrong?' You know what he did wrong? He ran," Trump said. "What he did wrong is he should have waited until '28.
"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. Some of them don't have too much."
DeSantis has long rejected criticism from Trump and others that suggested he should bide his time until Trump's White House aspirations expired.
"Nobody is entitled to be nominated; you've got to earn it," DeSantis told Newsmax's "Eric Bolling The Balance" last month. "You've got to earn everything in this world."
Also, DeSantis' campaign pitch against Trump has been he can be a two-term president and serve for eight years versus just four more years for Trump.
"Most of our voters appreciate a lot of the things that President Trump did," DeSantis told Bolling in May. "I do. He's been attacking me a lot, but I still give him credit for the things that he did well, especially with the economy in the first three years.
"They also understand that you need someone that can serve two terms. You need to have somebody that's going to be able to win and win big. And so I think we have a lot of folks that will consider somebody like me, who has proven to be very strong."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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