Donald Trump attacked Ron DeSantis at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, saying his closest challenger for the Republican presidential nomination had “no personality” – but claiming responsibility for the Florida governor’s career on the national stage.
Trump also repeated his lie about electoral fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden, to a receptive audience, before high-fiving fans at a mixed martial event.
Reporting a retelling of “a story Trump has told many times”, the Nevada Independent said the multiply indicted former president described being asked for an endorsement when DeSantis, a hard-right congressman, ran for governor in 2018.
“I said, listen Ron, you’re so dead that if Abraham Lincoln and George Washington came back from the dead, and if they put their hands and hearts together and prayed … nothing is going to change. Ron, you are gone.”
DeSantis beat the Democrat Andrew Gillum for governor, pursued a hard-right agenda in office then beat Charlie Crist, a former governor and former Republican, in a re-election landslide last year.
But DeSantis has struggled to make an impact on the presidential campaign, a clear second to Trump but unable to dent a near-30 point lead for the former president in most poll averages.
“I’m not a big fan of his, and he’s highly overrated,” Trump said in Las Vegas.
Hitting DeSantis for having supported cuts to social security, Trump said: “The one thing you have to remember, when a politician comes out with an initial plan and then they go into a corner because they’re getting killed. Because he’s getting killed. Well, he also has no personality. That helps, right?”
According to FactCheck.org, DeSantis “has, in the past, supported proposals that would reduce social security and Medicare spending, including raising the age for full eligibility”. DeSantis now says he will not “mess with” social security but Trump has seized on a profitable line of attack.
DeSantis is widely seen to lack campaigning skills, struggling to connect with voters and engaging in barbed conversations with reporters. This week, he told Fox News the “corporate media” was to blame for his struggles.
“Well, I think if you look at the people like the corporate media, who are they going after?” he said. “Who do they not want to be the nominee? They’re going after me.”
DeSantis also said he would participate in the first Republican debate in August, an event Trump has suggested he will skip.
Trump dominates the primary with more than 50% support despite facing an unprecedented 71 criminal indictments and the prospect of more.
Trials are scheduled over hush money payments to a porn star and Trump’s retention of classified records. The former president pleaded not guilty to all charges. He also denied wrongdoing in a civil case in which he was held liable for sexual abuse and defamation against the writer E Jean Carroll, and ordered to pay about $5m.
Further indictments are thought imminent from state and federal prosecutors regarding election subversion and incitement of the January 6 attack on Congress.
In Las Vegas, Trump repeated his lie about his conclusive defeat by Biden.
The Nevada Independent said “more than 10 attendees ” it interviewed “echoed Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, dismissed … indictments against him as an abuse of government power and said Trump was the only Republican presidential candidate who has always stayed true to his word”.
Attendees, the paper added, “described Trump as the only candidate who could save the country from ruin”.
On Sunday, a fringe candidate in the Republican primary, the North Dakota governor, Doug Burgum, said he would not do business with Trump outside politics.
“I just think that it’s important that you’re judged by the company you keep,” Burgum, who made his fortune in computing before entering politics, told NBC’s Meet the Press.
However, Burgum also said he would support Trump if he is the Republican nominee.
“I voted for him twice and if he’s running against Biden I will absolutely vote for him again,” Burgum said.
The decision was a “no-brainer”, he said.
