Well before Ron DeSantis officially entered the 2024 GOP primary, Donald Trump, who had previously endorsed DeSantis, turned on him. He attacked him mercilessly in the hopes of keeping him out of the race. When DeSantis ultimately jumped in, Trump treated it as an act of disloyalty, instructing his supporters to look at him as a failed governor who did nothing good for his state.
Now, in the aftermath of Iowa, the future of his campaign will likely be decided in South Carolina. However, according to a report from the Daily Mail, he's already contemplating an exit strategy for 2024 and roadmap for a 2028 campaign.
But if you ask the MAGA crowd, they're not only writing the obituary on DeSantis' 2024 campaign, they're preemptively declaring that DeSantis' potential 2028 campaign is a nonstarter.
"Ron DeSantis literally ran the single worst presidential campaign in US history," claimed Trump insider Roger Stone in a post on X/Twitter. "In a way it's good that he exposed himself as a treacherous, backstabbing ingrate and weasel now so that we didn't have to wait until 2028 to detect these character flaws."
This is pure hogwash, of course, but that's how the die-hard MAGA loyalists think. If Trump told them to jump off a cliff, they probably would. Social media is full of posts from Trump's most faithful supporters proclaiming that DeSantis' entire political career is now over and claiming that they wouldn't even support him in 2028. These aren't serious people; they are a small contingent of Trump supporters who will react as Donald Trump tells them to—just as they turned on DeSantis on Trump's orders in 2022.
And they don't represent the entirety of Trump's base. While in South Carolina on Tuesday, DeSantis said that Trump supporters in Iowa were telling him they'll be voting for him in four years.
"I had people come up to me saying, 'I love you, man. I'm going to do Trump this time and you next time,'" he told NBC News.
Trust me, the MAGA base that currently hates DeSantis will come around eventually. Assuming that DeSantis does drop out, he'll support Donald Trump and he'll be an important campaign surrogate.
“Well, I signed the pledge,” he told Fox News' Neil Cavuto, “I’m never somebody that takes his ball and goes home. And so, that’s just how I am. I mean, I don’t take any of this stuff personally. Cause it’s not about me, it’s about a larger effort, a larger movement.”
As far as campaigns go, it's hard to think of one more divisive and hard-fought than the 2008 Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. When Hillary finally dropped out, a group of her die-hard supporters pledged to keep the fight for Hillary going by pushing for Hillary to be nominated at the convention and even backing John McCain to keep the door open for a 2012 campaign for Hillary. They got tons of publicity, and many on the right foolishly believed they'd successfully thwart Barack Obama's presidential bid.
It didn't happen, of course. Their impact on the 2008 election was virtually nil. Similarly, the Trump supporters who claim they'll never support DeSantis will come around in due time, because he is the future of the GOP.
I knew that Ron DeSantis would be president one day when I saw him speak at CPAC 2022. He got a standing ovation from a crowd of Trump supporters that most likely included several people who are now repeating the same lies about him that Trump has been spewing on the campaign trail. The fact is, we have a country to save, and DeSantis has a record of winning the tough fights in Florida.
Our country may want Trump now, but they'll need Ron DeSantis in 2028.
