Gov. Ron DeSantis showed up on Fox and Friends Sunday and found himself for the second time in recent days addressing 2024 presidential speculation.
The Governor did not close the door on the race in 2024, but as he did late last week, the Governor did not say no to a run that would happen at the beginning of his second term, should he be reelected in 2022.
When host Will Cain asked DeSantis if he would take the 2024 plunge, the Governor laughed theatrically.
“We’ve got a great Governor’s election in 2022, which will be very important for our state, and quite frankly, I think, uh, you know, it gives us the ability to keep the momentum going, so that’s what we’re focused on.”
When asked if that was a no, the Governor demurred.
“That’s a ‘we have 2022 to worry about’,” the Governor said.
Indeed, the Governor is positioning himself nicely for whatever may come in the Governor’s race next year, with $9.5 million in his Friends of Ron DeSantis political committee. Though he has said that he doesn’t poll, allies do: the Florida Chamber of Commerce, as we reported on Jan. 29, had the Governor at 54% approval in its most recent canvass of the state.
However, whether he’s running to serve the full four years is another matter, as enthusiasts in the conservative media continue to urge him toward the 2024 starting line. A recent Newsmax appearance saw the Governor address head-on “speculation” that he would run for President.
As with the Newsmax hit, which allowed DeSantis to compare his leadership style favorably to that of other Republicans, the Fox News spot (purportedly “co-hosting” a Super Bowl pregame segment) allowed him to go far afield of the action tonight at Raymond James Stadium.
Familiar tropes, such as maunderings about the left-liberal “partisan agenda” and narratives of the “corporate elite media” and Democratic-run “dystopias,” filled more of the segment than the Governor’s commentary on the Super Bowl, which he still sees as a Tampa Bay Buccaneers win.
This article first appeared at Florida Politics.
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