Trump and DeSantis’s rocky rela­tion­ship repaired as spec­u­la­tion mounts he could replace Hegseth

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Trump and DeSantis’s rocky relationship repaired as speculation mounts he could replace Hegseth

Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump has mend­ed his rela­tion­ship with Gov. Ron DeSan­tis (R‑FL) despite an extreme­ly fraught 2024 pri­ma­ry race.

Trump met with DeSan­tis in recent days and is report­ed­ly con­sid­er­ing him as a poten­tial nom­i­nee to lead the Pen­ta­gon should Fox News host Pete Hegseth fail the con­fir­ma­tion process in the Sen­ate. The two lead­ers were among a group of Flori­da Repub­li­cans in atten­dance at a memo­r­i­al ser­vice over the week­end hon­or­ing three Palm Beach Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office deputies killed in a traf­fic acci­dent last month.

Still, many in MAGA world remain skep­ti­cal of pos­si­bly wel­com­ing the sec­ond-term gov­er­nor into a sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion, giv­en the his­to­ry between the pres­i­dent-elect and “DeSanc­ti­mo­nious.”

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Trump’s endorse­ment, in the president-elect’s own words, helped DeSan­tis “[take] off like a rock­et ship]” and win Florida’s 2018 guber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion. Trump repeat­ed­ly praised DeSan­tis for his han­dling of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, and DeSan­tis quick­ly came out in sup­port of Trump in the hours after the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago back in 2023 in pur­suant of improp­er­ly han­dled clas­si­fied doc­u­ments.

Still, the rela­tion­ship quick­ly soured after both jumped into the 2024 pres­i­den­tial race.

“The prob­lem with Ron DeSanc­ti­mo­nious is that he needs a per­son­al­i­ty trans­plant, and those are not yet avail­able,” Trump said in late 2023 of his then-pri­ma­ry oppo­nent. “Almost all con­gress­men and women that served with him and knew him well sup­port­ed me, some of them sur­pris­ing­ly so because of their rela­tion­ship with Ron.”

Trump rou­tine­ly mocked DeSan­tis on the trail until the lat­ter end­ed his bid in the spring. One ad from Trump’s Make Amer­i­ca Great Again Inc super PAC prop­a­gat­ed an online rumor that DeSan­tis rou­tine­ly ate pud­ding with his hands.

Sen. John Fet­ter­man (D‑PA), who has voiced approval for some of Trump’s Cab­i­net nom­i­nees, jok­ing­ly repeat­ed anoth­er of Trump’s attacks on DeSan­tis while weigh­ing in on his poten­tial nom­i­na­tion Wednes­day.

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“I’ll con­sid­er a YES on him if he final­ly admits to his boots with 4” lifts,” Fet­ter­man wrote on X, for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter.

DeSan­tis did even­tu­al­ly endorse Trump and was quick to back the pres­i­dent-elect after the foiled But­ler assas­si­na­tion attempt.

Trump also report­ed­ly met with DeSan­tis in Mia­mi in April, fol­low­ing DeSantis’s pri­ma­ry exit, where the two made amends.

Trump offi­cials say the pres­i­dent-elect main­tains con­fi­dence in Hegseth’s con­fir­ma­tion chances and that the Flori­da gov­er­nor had pre­vi­ous­ly been in con­sid­er­a­tion for sev­er­al Cab­i­net posi­tions.

Mul­ti­ple Flori­da Repub­li­can oper­a­tives down­played the idea that Trump and DeSan­tis had any mak­ing up to do in the first place.

“Pres­i­dent Trump knows that Ron is a war­rior, and as soon as DeSan­tis made clear that he would no longer stand in his way on the road back to the White House — prob­lem solved,” one vet­er­an Repub­li­can strate­gist, with past ties to both camps, told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er. “We need peo­ple like Ron in the fight. He would be a great asset to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, in any capac­i­ty.”

One Flori­da cam­paign oper­a­tive voiced some con­cern over the chain reac­tion nom­i­nat­ing DeSan­tis might set off in Tal­la­has­see.

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Should DeSan­tis leave office ear­ly, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez would become gov­er­nor and imme­di­ate­ly be faced with pick­ing not only a new lieu­tenant but also the seat vacat­ed by Sen. Mar­co Rubio (R‑FL), Trump’s sec­re­tary of state nom­i­nee.

Still, unlike in Trump’s first term, this White House has a new gate­keep­er who might be pre­dis­posed to keep­ing DeSan­tis on the out­side.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s incom­ing chief of staff and co-cam­paign man­ag­er, has her own his­to­ry with DeSan­tis.

Wiles, a long­time Flori­da-based Repub­li­can oper­a­tive her­self, helped ush­er DeSan­tis onto the nation­al stage but was ban­ished from his inner cir­cle dur­ing his first term in Tal­la­has­see on sus­pi­cion of leak­ing to the media. DeSantis’s cru­sade against Wiles result­ed in the loss of her lob­by­ing job with Bal­lard Part­ners but didn’t pre­vent Trump from hir­ing her for his 2020 and 2024 cam­paigns.

“What he did to Susie? Well, that was just a low blow,” Mike High­tow­er, a for­mer health insur­ance lob­by­ist from Jack­sonville and a long­time ally of Wiles, told USA Today. “He tried to take away her liveli­hood. Just so mean spir­it­ed.”

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“She hates him,” a source close to Trump’s tran­si­tion team added to Politi­co. “Vance prob­a­bly sees him as a rival.”

The bad blood between Wiles and DeSan­tis appar­ent­ly runs so deep that real estate investor Steve Witkoff, recent­ly appoint­ed by Trump to be spe­cial envoy to the Mid­dle East, stepped in to bro­ker Trump and DeSantis’s April meet­ing to bury the hatch­et.