In an in-depth profile on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that was published in The New Yorker on June 20, former-President Donald Trump was straightforward when asked about going up against DeSantis in the 2024 election.
Trump briefly discussed the possibility of running for president again, and said he was "very close to making a decision." Trump then told The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins he's confident that he would win the GOP nomination over DeSantis.
"I don’t know if Ron is running, and I don’t ask him," Trump said. "It’s his prerogative. I think I would win."
Trump spoke to Newsmax TV's Eric Bolling in a phone interview on Monday and reiterated that he isn't sure if DeSantis will run in 2024. Trump added that he is responsible for the governor winning the Florida election in 2019.
"I don't know that he wants to run. I have a good relationship with Ron, I don't know that he wants to run," Trump said, according to Business Insider. "I haven't seen that. You're telling me something that I've not seen, so we'll see what happens.
"But no, I was very responsible for getting him elected."
Trump told The New Yorker the same thing, saying, "If I didn’t endorse him, he wouldn’t have won."
Within The New Yorker profile on DeSantis, a former college baseball teammate of his at Yale had some harsh words for the Florida Gov. when asked about his personality.
"Ron is the most selfish person I have ever interacted with," a teammate said. "He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I’m speaking for others—he was the biggest di** we knew."
"This is the frustrating part. He’s so f***ing smart and so creative,” the same former teammate said. "You couldn’t even plagiarize off his work. He’d take some angle, and everyone knew there was only one person who could have done that."
While it's currently undetermined whether or not either will run for president in 2024, voters are still deciding who they would like to be the GOP nominee.
A straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February showed that 59% of the people in attendance preferred Trump to be the Republican nominee. DeSantis finished second in that poll with 28% of the attendees' support.
DeSantis then narrowly beat Trump in a recent Western Conservative Summit straw poll in June, according to POLITICO, as the Florida Gov. received support from 71% of participants to run for president in 2024, while Trump received 67% of the participants' support.
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