Today, scandal-ridden former President Donald Trump sat down for an interview with radio talk show host and former Director of the United States Office of Personnel Management Hugh Hewitt, where the big guy proceeded to make some pretty wild and outlandish claims about Florida’s ultra Right-wing governor, Ron DeSantis, who has come to be largely considered as Donald’s biggest competition for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
During the unhinged interview, the ex-president wasted no time in taking all of the credit for the political success that DeSantis has seen in recent years, before going on to shamelessly attempt to publicly humiliate the FL Republican governor with some seriously unflattering claims about the depths to which Ron allegedly sunk to in an effort to get the now disgraced former president’s political endorsement.
The interview kicked off with host Hewitt goading the former president to spill the tea on some of the infamous disparaging nicknames he plans to use against anyone who dares to oppose him in the 2024 presidential race. At one point, the talk show host floated the notion of Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin as a possible adversary to the former president, which quickly ruffled Trump’s feathers. The ex-president referred to Youngkin as a “disappointment” before going on to complain that the VA governor did show him and his team enough gratitude for all that he supposedly did for him.
“I did a lot for him,” Trump proclaimed, before finding a way to segway into an attack against DeSantis, “And he got elected because of me, just like Ron DeSantis. Even more so.”
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Of course, DeSantis and Trump used to get on quite well, when Ron remembered his sycophantic place with the narcissistic now-former president. But DeSantis is no fool, apparently, and following Donald Trump’s horrifying fall from grace and the months and years since the humiliating end of his tumultuous presidency, the FL governor has certainly seen an opening to seize power over the GOP. And you best believe Trump is furious about it.
In today’s interview, the former president declared that Ron DeSantis never would have even won his bid for FL governor if it weren’t for him and his golden endorsement — the same endorsement that proved to be gold-plated, at best, during the recent midterm elections.
But nevertheless, Trump didn’t hold back in his attack against the FL Trump-wannabe.
“He had nothing! He was dead, he was leaving the race, he came over and he begged me, begged me, for an endorsement. He was getting ready to drop out,” Donald claimed before going on to allege that DeSantis outright begged for Trump’s help to beat Adam Putnam in Florida’s Republican primary.
And that’s when the good part came:
There were tears coming down from his eyes. He said ‘if you endorse me, I’ll win.’ So I end up doing it, and he wins. They say it was like a bomb went off. Just a bomb totally went off. From the moment I endorsed him, he went from losing by numbers that were not catchable to winning easily.”
Trump eventually wrapped things up by claiming that “everything collapsed” for Putnam the very moment that Donald threw his endorsement behind DeDantis. “I got him past the crackhead [Andrew Gillam], who was the hottest person in the Democratic Party at the time,” Trump claimed.
The rest of the interview dissolved into a seemingly neverending attack against DeSantis and Nikki Haley for daring to have presidential political ambitions without his express permission.
Watch a clip of the interview here:
Donald Trump claims that Ron DeSantis called him before the 2018 primary in tears begging for an endorsement:
“He said, ‘if you endorse me, I’ll win,’ and there were tears coming down from his eyes.” pic.twitter.com/ndWuXNqZU4
— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) February 2, 2023
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
