Donald Trump suggested that his main rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is about to drop out of the Republican race for president in a Truth Social post with an embarrassing typo.
On Monday morning, the former president wrote: “Roomer are strong in political circles that Ron DeSanctimonious, whose Presidential run is a shambles, and whose poll numbers have absolutely crashed, putting him 3rd and 4th in some states, will be dropping out of the Presidential race in order to run, in Florida, against Rick Scott for Senate. Now that’s an interesting one, isn’t it?”
Mr Trump later deleted that post and shared a new one with the correct spelling of “rumour”.
Neither Mr DeSantis nor his campaign have given any indication that he’s set to drop out of the race to run for Senate. He briefly ran for Senate in the 2016 election while Senator Marco Rubio ran for president before he dropped out and ran for re-election.
Mr DeSantis’ campaign got some good news last week after his poll numbers saw a slight bounce in the wake of the first GOP debate, which Mr Trump did not attend.
He is trailing Mr Trump by nearly 40 percentage points, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll, but respondents appeared more open to his candidacy then in previous surveys.
But the Florida governor weathered another round of bad press over the weekend when faced boos as he spoke late on Sunday at a vigil for the three victims of the racist shooting in Jacksonville the day before.
Ju’Coby Pittman, a Democratic City Councilwoman, represents the area where the shooting took place. She addressed the governor head-on in her remarks in front of about 200 people who gathered near the Dollar General where the shooting took place.
“Governor, I know you’re here,” she said, according to The Hill. “And you know what? I’m glad you’re here, because you can see the people and the impact it’s had on the community.”
“He don’t care!” a member of the crowd shouted.
Ms Pittman stepped in when Mr DeSantis was met with boos as he started to speak, asking the crowd to listen.
“It ain’t about parties today,” Ms Pittman said. “A bullet don’t know a party.”
Mr DeSantis referred to the shooter as a “major league scumbag” and said there was zero tolerance for racist violence in Florida.
“What he did is totally unacceptable in the state of Florida,” he said. “We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”
The pastor of The Dayspring Church in Jacksonville, Rev Jeffrey Rumlin, later said: “Respectfully, governor, he was not a scumbag. He was a racist.”
Following the shooting on Saturday, Mr DeSantis said in a video message: “This shooting, based on the manifesto they discovered from the scumbag that did this, was racially motivated.”
Ryan Christopher Palmeter, 21, was identified as the suspect who opened fire at the Dollar General on Saturday, killing three people before turning the weapon on himself.
Jacksonville Sheriff TK Waters confirmed during a press briefing on Saturday night that all three victims were Black.
