• Trump voters who attended his Waco, Texas rally over the weekend gave reporters very different answers when asked about the prospect of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis running for the Republican nomination in 2024.
  • "DeSantis will never win." one Trump supporter said on Saturday, according to NBC News. “He is deep state.”
  • It isn’t an opinion shared by all Trump voters, however. Mike McCown told the same outlet that DeSantis is “100%” the future of the party. “I would vote for him if he won the nomination, but he’s not going to win the nomination. Timing is everything, and DeSantis’ time will be here in five years.”
  • Some fighting between both Trump and DeSantis camps has already broken out on Twitter and could become hotter than even the 2016 GOP primary campaign.
  • The comments came as former President Donald Trump attracted tens of thousands of supporters at a rally in Texas where he railed against politically-motivated prosecutors seeking to indict him.
Why It Matters
  • Trump and DeSantis are polling the highest in a hypothetical 2024 matchup 
  • Polls provided to Axios in recently found that DeSantis leads Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head race in Iowa, and ties with Trump in New Hampshire. However, the same poll found that in those states voters viewed Trump as more likely to beat Joe Biden in 2024, despite rating DeSantis more favorably overall.
  • On a national basis, Trump leads a hypothetical Republican primary, with DeSantis in second. 
  • DeSantis hasn't made any announcement regarding his plans for 2024, but when recently asked about the prospect of being Trump's VP, said "I'm probably more of an executive guy"