One of the most frustrating parts of reporting on Donald Trump is his inscrutability. The man is a closed book.
He would never, say, have a meltdown following a disappointing election and, in a panic, start publicly attacking a prominent Republican whom others in the party are shifting toward.
Oh, wait. Yes, he would absolutely do that.
On Thursday night, the former president began trashing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his strongest terms yet after allies in conservative media began heaping fawning praise on the governor.
“NewsCorp, which is Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the no longer great New York Post…, is all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious,” Trump wrote in a statement sent to reporters and on posted on Truth Social, the Twitter clone Trump had built when he was booted from that platform over the insurrection. “An average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations.”
While Republicans mostly underperformed nationally in Tuesday’s midterm elections, turning a red wave into more of a dribble, the GOP fared much better in Florida, where DeSantis coasted to an easy victory.
At his election party, the 44-year-old governor gave a victory speech that sounded a lot like a potential presidential campaign launch. Some in the crowd even chanted “two more years” in a sign they wanted him to run for the White House in 2024, rather than complete a full term as governor.
The next day — amid reports that Trump was privately fuming that the candidates he had endorsed, such as Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, hadn’t fared better — the New York Post, the tabloid newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, printed a front page that crowned the governor as a “young GOP star” and “DeFUTURE.”
