The incipient Republican civil war between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis heated up on Friday, with news of how the former US president reportedly plans to attack the rightwing Florida governor in the coming 2024 presidential primary.
Citing “sources and friends familiar with Trump’s thinking”, the news website Axios reported that the former president plans to attack “Ron DeSanctimonious, as he delights in branding the governor”, in areas including perceived disloyalty, support for changes to Social Security and Medicare and his response to the Covid pandemic.
Trump recently denied road-testing another derogatory nickname, Meatball Ron, which he conveniently repeated in his denial.
Signs of heightened tension between the two Republican powerhouses also emerged in Florida earlier this week, when a group of Trump supporters including the far-right activist Laura Loomer, were told to leave an event promoting DeSantis’s new memoir, according to a police officer on the orders of the governor’s staff.
Loomer called DeSantis a “tyrant”.
On Friday, Axios quoted “a Trump confidant” as saying: “There’s a pre-Trump Ron and there’s a post-Trump Ron. He used to be a Reagan Republican. That’s where he comes from. He’s now awkwardly trying to square his views up with the populist nationalist feeling of that party.”
DeSantis did not comment. Axios pointed out, however, that earlier this week the governor told Fox News Trump’s attacks were “background noise”.
Trump and the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley are the only major declared candidates for the Republican nomination, though DeSantis is among others widely expected to run.
Trump and DeSantis dominate polling, though Trump has recently enjoyed a boost, with healthy leads over DeSantis in multiple surveys.
Many Republicans oppose a third Trump candidacy after his chaotic presidency, two impeachments, incitement of the January 6 insurrection and poor record in successive midterm elections.
But many fear a split field could hand him the nomination without needing majority support, as was the case in 2016. Surveys have shown Haley and DeSantis splitting anti-Trump support.
Axios said the former president planned to focus on votes DeSantis cast as a congressman to raise the eligibility aid for Medicare – a hot-button issue in Washington as Joe Biden, the likely Democratic nominee in 2024, hammers Republicans on the issue.
In a related attack line, Trump reportedly wants to link DeSantis to Paul Ryan, the former vice-presidential nominee, House speaker and advocate of privatised social benefits now on the board at Fox.
Covid, Axios said, “is a top Trump target, even though the governor is known for resisting mask mandates. Trump plans to attack DeSantis’ caution in the earliest days of the pandemic – and try to fight the issue to a draw”.
On a similarly muddy issue, Trump reportedly wants to portray DeSantis as “wishy-washy on the war” in Ukraine, while he himself “toes the Maga line of cutting aid” to Kyiv in its war with Russia.
Finally, Axios said Trump planned to attack DeSantis for perceived disloyalty, after Trump supported his first bid for governor in 2018, and likability.
Speaking to Fox News this week, DeSantis said Trump “used to say how great of a governor I was. And then I win a big victory [in the 2022 midterms] and all of a sudden he had different opinions. And so you could take that for what it’s worth.”
If a Trump-DeSantis face-off seems inevitable, it will not happen this week at CPAC, the conservative convention outside Washington at which Trump will speak on Saturday. DeSantis is not scheduled to appear.
Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist turned leading anti-Trump activist, accused DeSantis of having “a glass jaw”.
“He chickened out of facing Trump at CPAC because his carefully curated tough-guy shtick can’t take a hit,” Wilson said.
