Ron DeSantis suggests his presidential campaign began right after re-election

Image via Jordan B. Peterson

In a new interview, Ron DeSantis said that once he was re-elected Governor, his team began turning their eyes toward a potential White House run.

“We knew from the day I won re-election in ’22 I was a marked man. We knew they were coming after me and we knew they did not want me to be the nominee,” DeSantis told Jordan B. Peterson.

In 2022, during the sole debate between DeSantis and Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee pressed DeSantis to “say (he) would serve a full four-year term as Governor.”

DeSantis said he wanted to “make things very clear” and that the only “worn-out donkey he was looking to put out to pasture” was Crist himself, not admitting that his end goal was a run for the White House.

During the Peterson interview, DeSantis seemed to talk about being Governor as something in the past.

“I really could dominate the discourse as Governor. I could go to these local markets and do that,” he said, contrasting that to the need to cultivate the “corporate media” as a presidential candidate.

DeSantis spent much of 2022 theatrically denying his interest in higher office, mocking what he called media “obsession” about a potential campaign, and deflecting when asked about 2024 “nonsense.”

“I think there’s obviously people that, the minute 2020 ended, have been basically running, and they’re going around doing all that stuff. That’s just not what I’ve been doing. I’ve just been focusing on the task at hand,” he claimed during a Fox News interview that year.

“Everyone wants to talk about me in Florida,” DeSantis crowed during a July 2022 press conference. “Like, I’m just sitting here, little ol’ me, doing my job!”

The speculation continued during the 2023 Legislative Session, with lawmakers passing a measure that was intended to clarify that Florida’s resign-to-run law did not mean a sitting Governor couldn’t run for President, while DeSantis traveled politically that spring under the auspices of a book tour promoting his memoir, “The Courage to be Free.”

By the end of May, he was a formal candidate.