ORLANDO, Fla. — Notorious provocateur Roger Stone warned Gov. Ron DeSantis to step aside for former President Donald Trump in 2024, slamming DeSantis’ “disloyalty” to Trump and implying the former president could pull his support.
Stone, a longtime Trump ally and Republican fixer, also again threatened his own potential run for governor against DeSantis this year.
His warning came after reports that a rift was growing between Trump and DeSantis over COVID-19 vaccines and their shared aspirations for the 2024 Republican nomination.
“Gov. Ron DeSantis refuses to put his own presidential ambitions on hold until President Donald Trump has decided to whether he wants to run again,” Stone said in a YouTube video posted Wednesday. “I consider that to be an incredible act of disloyalty and ingratitude.”
Stone called DeSantis “an unknown congressman with a bad haircut, an ill-fitting suit and an undistinguished record in Congress until President Donald Trump’s endorsement lifted him to the Republican nomination” in 2018.
Stone added, “because Ron is such a boring and piss-poor candidate, [Trump] … had to visit Florida twice to drag Ron over the finish line.”
While not directly saying he would run against DeSantis, Stone said he is eligible to run for office despite a felony conviction. Stone was convicted in 2019 of lying to Congress about Russian involvement in the 2016 election, but Trump commuted his sentence and later pardoned him.
“Gov. DeSantis says that I’m a convicted felon,” Stone said. “Well, actually, I’m a former convicted felon, thanks to the pardon by Donald Trump. But if Ron DeSantis isn’t careful, he will soon be a former governor of Florida without the active support of President Donald Trump.”
It’s not the first time Stone has issued such a threat. Last year, Stone had demanded DeSantis conduct an Arizona-style audit of the 2020 presidential election, or else he might seek the Libertarian nomination for governor.
“If Trump actually endorsed him, I think he actually could do a tremendous amount of damage,” said Matt Isbell, a Democratic consultant who runs the MCIMaps website. “... If it was Stone running as a third party in the general [election], then I think there’s an even bigger risk of damage because then you’re siphoning off a handful of a percent. And that would probably galvanize Democrats.”
Mac Stipanovich, a Tallahassee consultant and anti-Trump former Republican turned independent, said it’s too soon to know whether Stone’s threat is serious, or whether he has the backing of Trump.
“Roger is a hot mess,” Stipanovich said. “And he requires attention boosts to feed his ego and to pay his bills. … So I think you can expect Roger to continue to say things like this to accomplish those exact goals.”
Still, he said, “Trump wants to be the only candidate should he decide to run, which the indications are he wants to, and he expects everyone else who might run to take a knee. And so far, DeSantis has refused to do that. So Trump is going to slap him around for a while, and we’ll see what happens. … But I wouldn’t [assume] that Roger is speaking for Trump.”
Trump echoed Stone at his Orlando “History Tour” event in December, taking full credit for DeSantis’ victory in 2018.
“One day, he came to see me and he said, ‘It’s really important, I’d like to run for governor of Florida,’” Trump said. “... Nobody knew him.”
Trump appeared to criticize DeSantis in a January interview, referencing DeSantis’ refusal to say whether he received a COVID booster shot.
“The answer is ‘Yes,’ but they don’t want to say it, because they’re gutless,” Trump said. “You’ve got to say it — whether you had it or not, say it.”
In response, DeSantis said on a conservative podcast last week that one of his biggest regrets was not opposing Trump’s calls for lockdowns in March and April of 2020, according to the New York Times.
The back-and-forth over COVID-19 vaccines and restrictions is a growing divide between the two, as Trump has repeatedly praised the vaccines of late while DeSantis has increasingly surrounded himself with vaccine skeptics such as Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.
Isbell said DeSantis “clearly, at this point, seems to think he can outflank Trump on the right. ... I think Ron is now starting to feel like he can go without Trump and he’s trying to position himself.”
Stipanovich warned that DeSantis needs to be careful.
“Roger’s initial assessment is basically correct,” Stipanovich said. “Ron DeSantis was a hologram. He was a projection of Trump’s mind. If Trump didn’t think about DeSantis, DeSantis wouldn’t exist. And if Trump stops thinking about DeSantis, DeSantis could cease to exist.”
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