- Former President Donald Trump told the Wall Street Journal he'd vote for Gov. Ron DeSantis in November.
- Trump's permanent residence and voting status is in Palm Beach, Florida.
- There are lots of murmurs in the GOP over whether DeSantis — not Trump — is the future of the party.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis can count on the vote of one powerful Florida Man.
Former President Donald Trump plans to vote for DeSantis for reelection in November, he told the Wall Street Journal in a Monday interview.
Trump is spending the summer at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, but his permanent residence and voting status centers around his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
DeSantis isn't facing a Republican challenger in the Florida GOP primary scheduled for August 23. Several candidates are running for the Democratic nomination for governor, though the frontrunners are Rep. Charlie Crist, who formerly was governor of Florida as a Republican, and Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.
Trump hasn't formally endorsed DeSantis this cycle, though he frequently takes credit for endorsing the governor during his 2018 race, when he was a lesser-known US congressman, and helping him land the GOP nomination. He did so again during his interview with the Wall Street Journal that published Tuesday.
"If I didn't endorse him, he wouldn't have won," Trump said.
"I get along with Ron very well," he added. The former president also raised the results of a straw poll of young conservatives at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, where he spoke on Saturday, which showed Trump was favored to win the GOP nomination in 2024.
Other straw polls show that DeSantis may overtake Trump if both men run for president in 2024.
DeSantis, 43, has said he is focused on his gubernatorial election and has not revealed whether he has plans to run for president. But his high-profile clashes with the Biden administration, massive campaign warchest, and frequent appearances in national headlines have plenty of political insiders speculating that he may be the future of the GOP.
The governor won by just about 32,000 votes in 2018, and a political climate favorable this year to the GOP suggests he could fare even better in November. Florida Republicans have out-registered Democrats in the state by 220,000 people, and Trump won the state twice, even making inroads in 2020.
Trump himself has been dangling the prospect that he'll run for the White House again for more than a year, and if he were to be reelected then he would be 78. He told the New York Post last week that "78 is not old."
DeSantis spoke at the Turning Point conference on Friday, and on Saturday the governor headlined the Sunshine Summit in Hollywood, Florida, which is on the opposite coast from where Trump was speaking. He did not bring up Trump during his speech but instead repeatedly bashed President Joe Biden.
"You have to have the courage to stand in the way of the Brandon administration," DeSantis said Saturday, using an anti-Biden nickname often invoked by TV personalities and voters on the right.
