Long awaited, former President Donald Trump weighed in on his chances against a potential GOP primary field that would include his political protégé, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, during an interview with Yahoo Finance Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has never made it a secret that his political fortunes have been tied to Donald Trump. When he ran for Florida governor as a relative unknown in 2018, he touted his endorsement from Trump and that instantly gained him national recognition.
Three years later Trump and DeSantis are fueling speculation that they may run together in the 2024 elections. However, they both dodged the topic of what would happen if they should run against each other for the GOP nomination. DeSantis was adamant that he would not be running for the job.
Over the weekend, however, Trump finally addressed such rumors. He told Yahoo Finance in an interview that he is still noncommittal. “If I faced him, I’d beat him like I would beat everyone else,” Trump declared.
“I don’t think I will face him,” he predicted about what DeSantis and other Republicans would do if he got into the race. “I think most people would drop out, I think he would drop out.”
Meanwhile, the Florida governor is currently up for reelection in 2022, and he says he isn’t looking beyond that race. “I’m not considering anything beyond doing my job,” he recently told Fox News, adding “we’ve got a lot of stuff going on in Florida.”
Polling can be very unreliable years before any actual votes are cast. Yet surveys of the field so far have consistently shown DeSantis sitting atop a potentially crowded field as the most formidable obstacle to a third GOP nomination in a row for Mr. Trump.
Other polls, however, have painted a much more flattering picture to Mr. Trump of his continued popularity. An Emerson College poll from early September found Trump trouncing DeSantis 67% to 10% in a 8-person field. That same poll found him narrowly beating President Biden in a hypothetical head-to-head general election matchup.
Likewise, other polls from this summer found DeSantis polling well below Trump, but in the top tier of potential challengers to the former president.
