WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Former President Donald Trump urged his primary challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to “come home” to his state during a speech at the Turning Point Action conference here Saturday.
“We’re totally dominating DeSantis right here in the state of Florida,” Trump said. “So we want you to come home and take care of the insurance because you have the highest insurance in the country.”
Trump, who leads DeSantis by a wide margin in national polls in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has touched on the concept before. But this was the first time he accused DeSantis of neglecting his duties since the Florida governor formally entered the Oval Office sweepstakes in May.
Specifically, Trump took aim at one recent exodus of insurance companies that Florida’s CFO blamed on companies “playing politics.”
The former president’s remarks were delivered to a ballroom packed with thousands of attendees at a conference called by Turning Point Action, a conservative nonprofit that grew out of Trump’s MAGA movement and aims to engage voters in the political process.
A spokesman for DeSantis did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s attack.
Although DeSantis is Trump’s main challenger for the nomination, the Florida governor’s poll numbers have stagnated in recent months. Trump leads DeSantis, 53 percent to 21 percent Clear real policy average of recent national polls, with no other candidate in double digits.
DeSantis, who reported Saturday that he had raised $20.1 million in the first six weeks of his campaign, has been trying to reassure key supporters in recent days that he can defeat Trump. In a July 6 memo to “friends and family” obtained exclusively by NBC News, the DeSantis campaign wrote that it is “prepared to win this marathon.”
But the memo also pointed to challenges for DeSantis. The campaign vowed not to spend valuable campaign dollars in back-ballot states as it focuses on the top four on the primary schedule, and the memo promised that Sen. Tim Scott, R-C., perceived as a potential threat for DeSantis in some cases. first states, will soon receive “proper scrutiny.”
Katherine Koretski contributed.
