BILL MAHER RIPS CHINESE SPY BALLOON UPROAR: ‘WHO GIVES A S---?'
"Real Time" host Bill Maher (HBO)
Maher continued: "If DeSantis got in against Trump, Trump will do to him what he does with everybody. Not just bloody him, it'll be a battle in the mud — and all DeSantis has to do is wait and he can be president. I normally would say the opposite — get in early before they pick you apart, but in this case, with Trump, it changes everything."
Conservatives rushed to Twitter on Tuesday to spike the football when GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis was projected to defeat Charlie Crist to secure another term as Florida’s chief executive. (James Gilbert/Getty Images)
GOP pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson compared running against Trump to "running into a wood chipper" but disagreed with Maher that DeSantis should wait it out since this is his "moment."
"You don't get your moment all the time in American politics," Soltis Anderson said.
"It's gonna be his moment in four years anyway," Maher responded.
"In four years, he won't be governor of Florida anymore because he can't be, he probably won't be in the U.S. Senate unless he left to challenge Rick Scott somehow. He's gonna be kind of chilling, doing nothing," Soltis Anderson pushed back. "So this is his moment. I think it would be foolish for him to take a pass on this."
"Nixon wasn't anything when he ran in 1968," Maher doubled down.
Former President Donald Trump told Columbia Journalism Review he had to fight off "unbelievably fake stories" during his presidency. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)
This marked a much different attitude from Maher regarding the potential DeSantis-Trump showdown.
Maher said in 2022 that DeSantis had "more than a shot" to defeat Trump in a GOP primary. In November, he hailed DeSantis as "powerful" while declaring Trump a "loser."
He also previously suggested DeSantis would be a "way better" White House alternative to Trump, saying the Florida governor is not "certifiably insane."