Scott Jennings, a former aide to former President George W. Bush, called on Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to challenge former President Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
The former president, who announced his third presidential bid in November, has visibly viewed DeSantis as a potential rival in the upcoming race. Polls have shown the two possible challengers standing neck-and-neck among Republican voters’ preferred nominee in the past several months.
Jennings argued that the only solution to preventing Trump from securing the Republican nomination is for DeSantis to enter the race and defeat him.
“There’s only one strategy for getting rid of Trump, it’s to beat his ass,” Jennings told CNN Monday. “I mean, I don’t know what else to say. Ron DeSantis will have to get in this race and beat him. That’s the only way to make this go away. Now, he might have legal troubles and other things are gonna happen, that’s it. There’s no other strategy but to run and get more votes and win and there are things that will complicate that.”
“You’ve got Trump and DeSantis who are in a different universe in terms of their level of national support and everybody else is like fighting for one percent of the rest of the oxygen,” he continued. “If DeSantis wants to make a go at this, the reservoir of support exists to do it, the message, the generational message exists to do it, but he’s gotta do it.”
The former president has targeted the Florida governor in the last several months by nicknaming him “Ron DeSanctimonious” at a Nov. 6 rally in Pennsylvania. He further credited himself for DeSantis’ political career, claiming that the governor would be nowhere without his 2018 endorsement. (RELATED: DeSantis’ Office Refutes Claim He Is Feuding With Trump Over Florida Rally)
Trump told reporters aboard his plane Saturday that DeSantis’ possible candidacy would be “very disloyal” as the governor only allegedly earned his political position because of him.
A Wall Street Journal poll published in December found that 52% of Republicans favored DeSantis over the former president, and 38% of respondents supported Trump. An Economist and YouGov poll found DeSantis leading Trump 39% to 26% in November.
Some polls have found Trump to be in the lead against the Florida governor, including a recent Emerson survey released Tuesday that found the former president securing more support than DeSantis in a hypothetical matchup against President Joe Biden. The poll surveyed 1,015 U.S. voters between Jan. 19 and Jan. 21 with a three percent margin of error.