Bad Blood: All The Times Trump And Desantis Clashed

A year ago, it seemed impossible that Donald Trump would consider tapping Ron DeSantis for a role in a potential second administration. Since the Florida governor challenged Trump for the White House, the two Republicans have publicly fought over policies, traded personal insults and undermined one another.

But they may have to call a long truce if Trump nominates his former rival to be secretary of Defense if his current pick, Pete Hegseth, withdraws. While no decision has been made yet, the potential is there — Trump and DeSantis already publicly made up over the summer.

Here’s a look at their yearslong feud, from the name-calling to campaign attacks that hit home.

Trump taunts DeSantis

The president-elect has gone after DeSantis with surface-level insults on several occasions, from nicknaming him “Ron DeSanctimonious” and “sad little man” to suggesting that he ate pudding with his fingers and wears boot lifts — both of which the governor denied.

When DeSantis announced his presidential run in May 2023 with a glitchy Twitter Spaces session with Elon Musk, Trump said his new rival “desperately needs a personality transplant” on social media.

Later that month, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the Florida governor “is demanding that people call him DeeeSantis, rather than DaSantis. Actually, I like “Da” better, a nicer flow, so I am happy he is changing it. He gets very upset when people, including reporters, don’t pronounce it correctly. Therefore, he shouldn’t mind, DeSanctimonious?”

During a radio interview while campaigning in New Hampshire the next day, DeSantis called Trump’s habit of name-calling “juvenile” and said it was “one of the reasons he’s not in the White House now.”

Trump slams DeSantis for disloyalty

Trump’s anger at the Florida governor went deeper than petty name-calling: It was also about loyalty, something that the president-elect looks for in his Cabinet nominees and allies.

Shortly after DeSantis won reelection as Florida governor in 2022, Trump publicly accused him of playing games by not announcing his 2024 presidential ambitions just days before Trump planned to announce his own White House bid. He criticized the Florida leader as “average” in a post on Truth Social and took credit for DeSantis’ gubernatorial win.

“He says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” Trump wrote.

Six months later, Trump lamented it again — calling DeSantis “very disloyal” for running against him in an interview with The Messenger in May 2023.

He said DeSantis “was a dead man walking” before he endorsed him for governor in 2018: “He was dead, dead as a doornail. And I revived him,” adding, “If that happened to me, I would never run against the guy that did that.”

A floundering campaign

Trump drew stark contrasts between himself and DeSantis on the campaign trail, including when he took questions from the media for 20 minutes shortly after DeSantis made headlines for losing his temper at a reporter.

In April 2023, a handful of Republican Florida legislators endorsed Trump for president over their home state’s governor — while DeSantis was visiting D.C. in an attempt to demonstrate strength with the Washington establishment.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff and senior adviser, wielded her knowledge of her boss’ GOP foe from her time at the helm of DeSantis’ 2018 governor campaign — and the memory of Trump firing her in 2019 at DeSantis’ urging — against the Florida leader during the primaries. When DeSantis pulled out of the race in January and endorsed Trump, Wiles wrote a since-deleted social media post that read: “Bye, bye.”

DeSantis hit back on Covid-19

Trump attacked DeSantis’ handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2023, accusing the governor of “trying to rewrite history” and saying he “promoted the vaccine as much as anyone.”

He later quipped that “even [New York Gov. Andrew] Cuomo” did better than DeSantis at handling the pandemic in a campaign video.

The remark seemed to hit a nerve. DeSantis responded on "Good Morning New Hampshire with Jack Heath" the following week that “people fled Cuomo’s lockdowns to come to Florida by the tens of thousands.”

DeSantis’ campaign went on to release a video mashup attacking Trump for saying he does not regret lockdowns while DeSantis opposed them.

… And abortion

DeSantis has also gone after Trump’s stance on abortion. During a CNN town hall in January, when asked if Trump is pro-life, DeSantis responded, “Of course not.”

The president-elect is inconsistent on his stance on abortion, often taking credit for overturning Roe v. Wade while also vowing to veto any federal abortion ban. DeSantis, on the other hand, signed a six-week abortion ban into law in Florida — which Trump called “too short.”

In April, the Florida Supreme Court upheld a different 15-week ban signed by DeSantis and ruled that Floridians could vote to reverse the ban to make abortion broadly legal in the state through a constitutional amendment. The measure failed to pass, giving DeSantis a win both in terms of policy and in forcing Trump to speak on the issue as a Florida resident himself.

DeSantis flaunts relative youth

In addition to his policies, DeSantis has taken shots at Trump as a person. In a 2023 interview with CNN’s “State of the Union,” he knocked Trump as being too old to be president while arguing that he, at 45, is in the “prime of my life.”

“I just think that that’s something that has been shown with Joe Biden. Father Time is undefeated. Donald Trump is not exempt from any of that,” DeSantis said.

Age was a significant factor in the 2024 presidential election, with Trump’s campaign team often taking shots at Biden’s age and mental acuity. The Florida governor’s campaign took advantage of it too, creating an “accident tracker” to record “how long the former president can go without a workplace accident on the campaign trail.”