Trump 2024 put out a slashing attack on DeSantis the same day, describing Florida as tumbling into destruction (even though Trump seems quite happy living there), harkening back to Bush père’s vicious attacks on Massachusetts when he ran against Michael Dukakis.
The bitchy Trump has plenty of ammunition when DeSantis wears white boots redolent of Nancy Sinatra, as Jimmy Kimmel said, to tour Southwest Florida after a hurricane; or when a report alleges (denied by the governor) that DeSantis ate chocolate pudding with his fingers. (Trump backers already have an ad up about that beauty.) DeSantis let Fort Lauderdale go underwater, inundated by flash floods, while he gallivanted around testing the waters.
The word “likable” became a flashpoint for Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, with some women supporters claiming it was sexist to talk about that with women candidates.
But as Jerry Brown once told me: “I think we’re always judged on likability and I think that’s something a lot of politicians don’t want to admit. But I can tell you, when they throw you out, most times they didn’t like you. They got tired of you.”
Ken Langone, a Republican megadonor who gave $200 million to the N.Y.U. medical center, told The Washington Post that he was concerned about DeSantis’s rigid manner and his strict abortion ban. Former Representative David Trott, a Michigan Republican, told Politico’s Playbook that in the two years he sat next to DeSantis on the Foreign Affairs Committee, “he never said a single word to me,” even hello. “If you’re going to go into politics, kind of a fundamental skill that you should have is likability,” Trott said, adding, “He’s just a very arrogant guy, very focused on Ron DeSantis.”
Representative Greg Steube of Florida also told Playbook that the governor had never reached out to him — or replied to his efforts to get in touch — even when he was in the hospital after falling 25 feet off a ladder in January. Trump was the first to call him, he said. Trump has also wined and dined Florida lawmakers at Mar-a-Lago.
On Monday, Steube endorsed Trump (as of Friday, 11 Florida representatives were for Trump and one for DeSantis) and he later tweeted, “Sad to see the Florida House and Senate, two bodies I had the honor to serve in, carrying the water for an unannounced presidential campaign.”