Former President Donald Trump said an alliance with likely primary challenger Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is “very unlikely.”
Trump, who credits himself as the person who put DeSantis on the map politically, said he had never considered DeSantis a potential running mate for the 2024 election.
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“No, I think that would be a very unlikely alliance,” Trump told Newsmax on Friday.
“We have a lot of great people in the Republican Party. I’ve never thought of it, but, you know, some people every once in a while mention it, but that’s about it,” Trump said.
DeSantis has also dismissed the idea of being Trump’s running mate. He called himself an “executive guy.”
Trump again took credit for DeSantis’s success. He cited his role in getting him elected over former Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.
“I appointed him,” Trump said. “He was failing badly in the polls. He was out of politics. He was going to be out of politics, and I endorsed him, and he went from a very small number to a very high number. I had rallies for Ron, and we got him in. Then a couple of years later, they said, ‘Would you run against the president for president?’ He said, ‘I have no comment.’ I said, ‘That’s not supposed to happen.'”
Although Trump did help DeSantis get elected in 2018, DeSantis won reelection in November by nearly 20 percentage points without Trump’s approval.
Trump then claimed that even if DeSantis decided to run, he would not get elected on the national level because of his alleged voting record while he was in the House of Representatives. For example, DeSantis voted to raise the retirement age to 70 in 2013.
“If you look at his record, he can’t win because he voted against Social Security; he voted against everything,” Trump said. “He voted against things that are so important. Medicare. He voted against Medicare. He wanted to raise the age substantially of people getting Social Security.”
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DeSantis recently told Fox News that despite voting for nonbinding budget resolutions that called for raising the retirement age, he does not support touching the entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare now.
DeSantis has not publicly announced a bid for the White House but is expected to announce a final decision in the summer. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are the only candidates aside from Trump to announce a run to be the Republican nominee.
