Gov. Ron DeSantis mentioned a possible vice presidential candidate, should he secure the Republican nomination for president in 2024, and there’s quite a lot to unpack here.
“Governor, you have spent a lot of time with Governor Reynolds, You defended her after President Trump’s recent statements. Would you consider her as a potential vice presidential pick in this campaign?” a reporter asked DeSantis over the weekend.
“Of course,” DeSantis replied. “I mean, she’s one of the top public servants in America. I thought the attacks on her were totally, totally out of hand and totally unnecessary. We should be thanking good Republican officeholders.”
He continued, “You know, we kind of joke about the Iowa-Florida [competition] — sometimes they do things before us, sometimes we do. But honestly, I want them to do better than us because it’s healthy. When Republicans are doing well, I like that. I don’t get jealous of that. I want to see them do well. And so, they’ve done a great job, and I think she’s been a model public servant, and anybody who’s a Republican that’s trying to denigrate her I think is way off base on that.”
Last week, Donald Trump attacked Reynolds for remaining neutral in the GOP primary despite the fact he had endorsed her back in 2018.
“I opened up the Governor position for Kim Reynolds, & when she fell behind, I ENDORSED her, did big Rallies, & she won,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, referring to Reynolds’s 2018 race. “Now, she wants to remain ‘NEUTRAL.’ I don’t invite her to events!”
Related: Is This Really a Smart Move for Ron DeSantis?
Just as Trump thinks Ron DeSantis is being disloyal for running for president, he thinks Reynolds is being disloyal for not endorsing him, even though she isn’t endorsing DeSantis, either. Trump’s attack on Reynolds was, no doubt, an unforced error that cost him at least one endorsement so far.
“Trump is very outspoken. We’ve come to expect that, and that’s fine when it was focused at the right people,” Iowa state senator Jeff Reichman (R-50th district) said. “And then this week, when it became focused on our governor … I felt like it was the right thing to do to look out for our governor, our home team here. Keeping that in mind, I decided to pull my endorsement for Trump.”
Reichman switched his support to Ron DeSantis.
While DeSantis made no promises about whom he might name as a running mate, his embrace of Reynolds stands in stark contrast to Trump and could help him with the voters of this very important state in the primaries. So far, it seems like Trump is doing whatever he can to help DeSantis win over Iowa voters.