But during a rally in Miami for Senator. blond frame (R-Fla.), who is running for a third term against Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), Trump struck a much more conciliatory tone.
“You are going to re-elect my wonderful, great friend Marco Rubio to the United States Senate and you are going to re-elect Ron DeSantis as your governor,” Trump told a crowd at the Miami-Dade County Fairgrounds.
Trump is widely expected to announce in mid-November that he is run for president. The move would pit him against DeSantis, who is also expected to run in 2024 and has built a national reputation in recent years for his handling of COVID-19 in Florida and his constant falling out with President Joe Biden.
While the two men have mostly avoided criticizing each other publicly, there have been skirmishes in recent weeks. Beyond tagging DeSantis with a new nickname, Trump used his social media site Truth Social to post a video of former Fox News host Megyn Kelly saying DeSantis can’t “beat” Trump on a debate stage. , and further fueled political intrigue when it didn’t. invite him to the Miami rally.
In Miami, however, Trump delivered a speech similar to others he had given. He slammed Biden over immigration, spread unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, and accused Democrats of being extremists in a part of Florida with a large population of residents who fled or their family members fled leftist warlords in Cuba. , Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“Hispanics are joining our movement by the millions and millions and millions…many are here,” Trump said. “Many Hispanic Americans have their roots in nations absolutely destroyed by these vile ideologies, and they don’t want this to happen here.”
He also hinted at his possible run for the White House, saying he “will probably have to do it again. … Stay tuned.”
As a long list of speakers hyped up the crowd ahead of Trump’s arrival, DeSantis kicked off the first of three separate events as part of his 13-stop tour ahead of Election Day. The governor has not publicly criticized Trump, even as advisers acknowledge they have noted Trump’s growing readiness to attack him.
DeSantis stuck to a familiar campaign speech at two stops that included calling out Biden, as well as a reminder of his battles over Covid-19 and with Disney over the Bill “Rights of parents in education”known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by its critics.
“Look, I’ve been fighting him the whole time,” DeSantis said of Biden. “I have been there since day one, since he came in and we have been fighting for you. November 8 is really the first time that all Americans can go to the polls and tell Joe Biden what they think of his policies. You can send a strong message about that and I think he needs to hear that.”
While criticizing Biden on immigration, he told the crowd that the federal government needed to reinstate policies like “remain in Mexico” and finish the border wall. He did not mention that these were Trump’s policies, which he has done during some of his previous campaign stops.
Dueling rallies by Trump and DeSantis overshadowed a last-minute push by Democrats. Charlie Crist, the Democratic candidate challenging DeSantis, made several stops in South Florida, including a “Souls to the Polls” event designed to try to push voters to the polls on the last day of early voting. Crist has trailed DeSantis in multiple polls leading up to Election Day.
The feud between Trump and DeSantis has forced Florida Republicans to quietly signal which side they may be on, even as they try to navigate a seemingly unwinnable situation. State Senate President Wilton Simpson, who is running for statewide agriculture commissioner, was on stage with Trump, who had previously endorsed his candidacy for statewide office.
Simpson and DeSantis have had bad blood in the past, including the governor at one point recruiting a Republican to run against him in the GOP primary. That candidate dropped out after Simpson agreed to have the Florida Senate consider the congressional redistricting maps championed by DeSantis after the governor vetoed the maps drawn up by the state Legislature.
During his brief onstage remarks, Simpson, referring to Trump, said voters must “bring a true conservative fighter back to the White House in 2024.” He also called DeSantis “Governor of the United States,” a common nickname that Republicans across the country have begun using when referring to DeSantis.
Florida GOP Chairman Joe Gruters, who has been a staunch Trump supporter since his days as chairman of the Sarasota County GOP, attended Trump’s rally and at one point began yelling “Run Trump!” , run” through the crowd. he responded enthusiastically.
The site of the event, Miami-Dade County, comes with its own set of intrigues during the 2022 midterms. DeSantis and the Republicans appear poised to win the former Democratic stronghold for the first time in two decades. The most recent polls show DeSantis leading Crist in Miami-Dade and with Hispanic voters, a large concentration of whom live in Miami and surrounding cities. It’s part of what appears to be a massive red wave in Florida for Republicans, who now hold a 300,000-person registration lead over Democrats.
As of Sunday morning, Republicans also held a lead of nearly 340,000 votes, a huge lead during a run-up to elections that Democrats usually win ahead of what is usually a big Republican wave on Election Day.
“This is the place where socialism comes to die,” said the Republican representative. Mario Diaz-Balart he told the crowd, which erupted in applause.