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Former President Donald Trump was blunt when asked why his presumed top challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, is lagging in the polls.
“He’s got no personality. And I don’t think he’s got a lot of political skill,” Trump told The Messenger, a UK-based media outlet.
Lindsey Curnutte, a DeSantis political adviser, declined to comment on Trump’s statements. But, in response, she sent clips of DeSantis engaging with people in Iowa over the weekend. Courtney Holland posted on Twitter: “Pretty big crowd of people for an unannounced stop” in Des Moines. Another tweet shows DeSantis laughing and joking with people.
In an exclusive interview released May 15, The Messenger asked Trump a series of questions about DeSantis; a transcript of the interview posted online revealed no questions directly probing Trump’s views of President Joe Biden, the current frontrunner for the Democrats’ presidential nomination.
So far, DeSantis, who remains an undeclared candidate, has refrained from direct attacks on Trump. However, DeSantis recently stated that the GOP needs to stop dwelling on the past in its attempt to defeat Democrats in the 2024 presidential contest.
Responding to DeSantis’s apparent glancing blow, Trump told The Messenger: “First of all, I’m not at all caught up in the past. And second of all, I’m doing much better against Biden than he is in the polls…I’m beating [DeSantis] by 40 points in some polls, so he can talk about what he wants.”
In the May 15 RealClearPolitics (RCP) average, Trump was barely defeating Biden in a head-to-head matchup; DeSantis was tied with Biden.
However, 55 percent of Republican voters said they would vote for Trump. That’s the highest RCP level Trump achieved since announcing his candidacy in November; back then, and currently, DeSantis was pulling about 20 percent of polled voters.
However, DeSantis still hasn’t declared his candidacy.
While DeSantis’s RCP poll ranking was climbing from November through March, Trump has been polling more strongly since news of his New York indictment leaked on March 30.
Some observers think the prosecution has buoyed Trump’s poll performance because people perceive that the charges are politically motivated. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying New York business records.
Since his indictment, Trump generally has been trending upward in the RCP rankings while DeSantis has trended downward; on RCP’s graph, the two candidates’ polling averages closely mirror each other in opposite directions.
However, the polling data was gathered before a New York jury found in favor of a woman who claimed Trump defamed her in his denial of her allegations of sexual assault. Trump has appealed.
The former president also remains under investigation in multiple other probes. Some pundits say think Trump’s legal troubles may catch up with him and torpedo his run for the presidency. But others theorize that the continued targeting of Trump could boost his popularity among those who agree with his contention that these investigations amount to “witch hunts.”
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on April 4, 2023. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who declared his presidential bid in April, recently told “Meet The Press” that Trump “played the victim,” a message that has resonated with some voters.
“People believe he’s been picked on,” Hutchinson said, and voters see the New York case as unfair.
In a field of 10 candidates, including some who remain unannounced, Hutchinson was drawing less than 1 percent of the polled voters, RCP reported.
However, Hutchinson said, “This will settle out over time. And so let’s judge it understanding that we’re early in the campaign. We’ve got a lot of room to grow.”
During The Messenger interview, Trump said he never contacted DeSantis’s people to try to dissuade him from running. “If he runs, he runs. But he’s very disloyal,” Trump said, repeating his criticism of DeSantis’s alleged ingratitude for Trump’s game-changing endorsement when DeSantis first ran for governor in 2018.
“He was dead, dead as a doornail. And I revived him,” Trump said.
Without Trump’s endorsement, DeSantis may have lost by more than 30 points, Trump said.
Trump described himself as a very loyal person; he said that, if the roles were reversed and he won because of an endorsement, he [Trump] would never run against such an endorser.
Describing DeSantis as not quite ready to lead the nation, Trump said news media are calling DeSantis “a rank amateur.” He also said DeSantis, 44, has “plenty of years” to seek the presidency. Trump is 76; Biden is 80.
Trump thinks that supporters of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda dislike the perceived disloyalty.
“I think if he runs, he’s gonna lose MAGA votes forever; that’s my opinion,” Trump said. “And the MAGA votes are almost everything in the Republican Party—far bigger than you think.”
Asked whether he would endorse DeSantis if he does seek the Republican nomination and prevails, Trump said it was too early for him to make that call.
