During a trip to Florida to visit the new “Alligator Alcatraz” facility for detaining illegal immigrants, he singled out one-time rival Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) for effusive praise.
“You’re my friend and you’ll always be my friend,” Trump told DeSantis at the beginning of a roundtable after touring the detention camp. “We may even have some skirmishes in the future– I doubt it. But we’ll always come back because we have blood that seems to match pretty well.”
That’s a big change from 2023 and 2024, when during the Republican primaries Trump made calling DeSantis a “son of a bitch” a standard part of his campaign stump speech. Trump was irritated that DeSantis, whom he had endorsed over a more favored Republican candidate in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial primary, had decided to run against him for the presidential nomination.
At one state GOP fundraising dinner, Trump suggested in a speech that country singer Lee Greenwood, who was in the audience, should write a song about DeSantis’s act of betrayal.
Trump dubbed the Florida governor “Ron DeSanctus” and “Ron DeSanctimonious,” continuing his tradition of assigning derisive nicknames to his political opponents. There were rumors he called DeSantis “Meatball Ron” and “Tiny D” in private, though Trump denied it.
DeSantis had emerged from the 2022 midterm elections as a rival power broker to Trump inside the GOP. DeSantis won a second term by a landslide, and Republicans tightened their control of Florida while the anticipated red wave mostly failed to materialize in the rest of the country.
Some Trump-endorsed candidates in other states did not fare as well, especially in the battleground state Senate races. Democrats actually gained a seat in the upper chamber, as Trump-endorsed Mehmet Oz lost to Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who was then Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, and Herschel Walker was defeated in a runoff election by Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA).
DeSantis’s pitch was essentially that he was Trump with more discipline and without the drama and distractions. If President George H.W. Bush was supposed to be kinder and gentler than President Ronald Reagan, DeSantis was cast as more competent than Trump.
But “competence, not ideology” was the slogan of the hapless Democrat Bush beat in 1988, not that of a presidential winner. Republican primary voters didn’t want Trump Lite. They preferred the real thing, and much of the dissenting minority wanted something different altogether, such as former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
DeSantis never gained any traction and dropped out after the Iowa caucuses, endorsing Trump. But more than any event other than the multiple indictments, DeSantis’s White House bid lit a fire under Trump and his initially listless campaign.
Trump downplayed their contentious past on Tuesday.
“We had a little off period for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long,” he said. “We have a lot of respect for each other.” Trump added that their relationship was “a 10 — maybe a 9.9 because there might be a couple of little wounds. I think we have a 10. We get along great.”
Politico’s Kimberly Leonard likened the moment to the parable of the prodigal son in the Bible.
A rapprochement with Trump could also help DeSantis extend his political career after he is term-limited out of the Florida governor’s office in 2027.
It is not uncommon for Trump to reconcile with former rivals after nasty spats. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is second only to Vice President JD Vance as Trump’s successor as the leader of the Republican Party — Trump named both when asked about the Republican talent pool in a recent interview. During the 2016 campaign, Trump mocked Rubio as “Little Marco” and belittled his water consumption habits. Rubio made a thinly veiled reference to the size of Trump’s genitalia on a Republican debate stage.
Now, Trump and Rubio are close. The same could be said for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who once called “Donald” a “sniveling coward” who had insulted his wife. Cruz pointedly declined to endorse Trump while addressing the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, instead urging delegates to vote their conscience. The two are now friends.
Also in 2016, Trump campaigned against the bad temper Ben Carson acknowledged having in his memoirs.
“It’s in the book that he’s got a pathological temper,” Trump told CNN at the time. “That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that … as an example: child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.”
Carson later served as Trump’s Secretary of Housing and Development during his first term. Trump often asked Carson to lead prayers during Cabinet meetings. Trump was said to be impressed by Carson’s dignified response to his campaign attacks, and the two now enjoy a positive relationship.
Of course, things can go the other way. Haley rounded out her presidential resume with a foreign-policy position in Trump’s first administration, seemed to leave her job on good terms with the president, and delivered a fulsome speech to the 2020 Republican National Convention comparing Trump at length to Reagan. Now she is derided as a “Birdbrain” whom Trump won’t hire again.
Trump’s biggest split was with former Vice President Mike Pence over the events of Jan. 6, 2021. On that day, Pence defied Trump and a slew of pro-Trump rioters attacking the Capitol by voting to certify former President Joe Biden’s victory over their ticket in the 2020 election. Pence contended that he lacked the constitutional authority to do otherwise. Some rioters chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!” The rift between the two men has only deepened since, with former second lady Karen Pence refusing to shake Trump’s hand or even acknowledge him at President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. The former vice president did stand up and shake hands with Trump.
Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump for president in 2016. Trump never forgave Sessions for recusing himself in the first-term Russia investigation, which led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller. When Sessions tried to return to the Alabama Senate seat he had previously won with more than 90% of the vote, Trump backed his primary opponent instead. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) now holds the seat, though Trump and Sessions will always have White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller in common.
However, because Trump believes all is fair in political warfare, sometimes his feuds appear more personal than they really are. They often recede when Trump is no longer at odds with the person over an election or legislative outcome. Trump made up with former adviser Steve Bannon, who recently had lunch with the president at the White House, and has had on-and-off relationships with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Rand Paul (R-KY). The three of them golfed together late last month despite Paul’s opposition to the “big, beautiful bill.”
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That’s why, in spite of the barbs about canceled government contracts and even deportation on one side and references to the Jeffrey Epstein files and threatened primary challenges on the other, there’s hope for Elon Musk to return to Trump’s good graces one day.
Perhaps their blood will match pretty well, and it will be a big, beautiful homecoming.
