Around this time last year, Donald Trump wasn’t doing too hot. Him dining with anti-Semites, getting blamed for weak midterms, scoring his first criminal charges, and dropping much-mocked NFTs — this all had people thinking he was finally, at long last done. (Sigh.) What a difference a year makes. He’s back on top, even eclipsing Joe Biden in some polls. But that doesn’t mean he’s invincible.
Per Newsweek, while appearing at the Florida Republican Party’s Freedom Summit in Kissimmee on Saturday, the former president praised Republican governors’ handling of the pandemic, some of whom defied CDC recommendations to keep the states closed until conditions improved. Trump listed some of the states that stayed open, but clearly skipped over perhaps the biggest one: Florida, whose governor, Ron DeSantis, whose popularity among the GOP soared over his stubborn behavior. The crowd didn’t like that.
#BREAKING: Donald Trump starts naming states that did a “good job” during COVID, without naming Florida, some members of the crowd chant “Florida”
“Florida! Florida!”
“I will say this. Every Republican governor did much better than the best Democrat governor.” pic.twitter.com/zcApenju13
— Florida’s Voice (@FLVoiceNews) November 4, 2023
As it became clear that Trump was going to snub the guy running a distant second to him in the primary polls, people in the crowd started chanting, “Florida!” Trump noticed the backlash, smirked, chuckled, then gave them some kind of red meat.
“I will say this,” he told the crowd. “Every Republican governor did much better than the best Democrat governor. It’s true.”
But despite Trump’s spin, some pointed out that the big guy seemed genuinely scared by the reaction he’d received.
Trump gets visibly scared when the crowd calls him out for leaving Ron DeSantis out of his list of governors who did a great job handling COVID.
“Florida! Florida!” the crowd yells to correct Trump, who could only smile weakly in reply. pic.twitter.com/nIowPJzyRD
— Never Back Down (@NvrBackDown24) November 5, 2023
Floridians called out Donald Trump for slighting Florida once again when he left @RonDeSantis off the list of Republican governors who did a great job on Covid.
He knew what he was doing and he got caught red-handed.
— Cryptid Politics
(@CryptidPolitics) November 5, 2023
He still wouldn’t mention Florida, nor its Meatball governor.
Trump did talk DeSantis elsewhere during his speech. He elicited laughs as he did an unflattering impersonation of him, saying, “’’I need your endorsement, sir. I need your endorsement please. I need your frickin’ endorsement, please.’ So I gave him the endorsement.”
Florida audience laughs while Trump tells his story about how DeSantis had tears flowing from his eyes and does an impression of DeSantis begging for his endorsement pic.twitter.com/MpBVCJMvDl
— Acyn (@Acyn) November 4, 2023
In other words, Trump knew he was better off sticking to the Greatest Hits.
(Via Newsweek)