A panel on MSNBC echoed former President Donald Trump’s attack on Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida Friday, saying the governor did owe his rise to the former president.
Trump went after DeSantis in a Thursday statement issued to The Free Press, calling him an “average” governor with “great Public Relations” who was “politically dead” prior to receiving Trump’s endorsement for governor in the 2018 Republican primary.
DeSantis won the 2018 primary over Adam Putnam by 20% and barely defeated Democratic Mayor Andrew Gillum of Tallahassee by 0.41% in the 2018 general election.
“Now, look, there’s actually one truth in Donald Trump’s statement, and that is that Ron DeSantis owes his political career to the former president, without question. There’s nobody in America that more definitely and successfully used Donald Trump — and I [can] say used, right?” Former Republican Rep. David Jolly, a critic of Trump, said. “He was the ambassador of Trumpism when he was in the House. He then uses Trump to get to the governor’s mansion and then he steps aside from Trump, he gets adjacent to Trump, he doesn’t defend him but he also doesn’t criticize him.”
DeSantis won the 2022 gubernatorial election in a landslide victory, defeating former Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist, who served as governor from 2007-2011, by more than 19%, while Republicans underperformed expectations of a “red wave” nationally.
“I mean, I think a lot of people are waiting to hear what the posture of Ron DeSantis is in this moment? Does he just say nice things about the President and move on. Because right now, look, he’s got the hot hand,” Jolly continued. “He doesn’t need to engage in the scrum. Ron DeSantis famously has a very glass jaw, fragile ego. You get him on the ropes and you start to see a Ron DeSantis that’s not the manufactured package you see today. How will Ron DeSantis respond?”
Jolly also attacked Republicans, saying that the shift to DeSantis did not absolve them for previous support of the former president.
“I think it’s very important that we recognize they are not moving on from Trump out of conviction,” Jolly told co-host Mike Brzezinski. “They had opportunities to do that when he was separating families at the border, when he was attacking our democratic institutions, when he was doing all of those things. They could have left Trump then, but they didn’t.”
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