Ron DeSantis: The Making and Remaking (and Remaking) of MAGA’s Successor

DeSantis’ focus on television was prophetic. “Ron was obsessed with Fox. That’s how he got on Trump’s radar,” said a former adviser. Multiple Republicans who have interacted with DeSantis have told me that DeSantis has begun tailoring his policies to appeal to Fox viewers. “His first question was always, ‘How is this going to play out on Fox?’ If you give an opinion he doesn’t like, he says, ‘I don’t think that’s going to play well on Fox,'” said a prominent Republican. “Fox was in the office 24/7. Ron made it abundantly clear that he would only do Fox,” recalled a former employee. “Getting Ron on Hannity was a big priority,” said another former DeSantis staffer. According to a source, DeSantis wrote with Hannity and Fox host Laura Ingraham.

In 2015, DeSantis was among a group of nine House Republicans who founded the hard-right Freedom Caucus. He courted the group’s then-chairman, Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan. “Jim was calling Ron from across the room and Ron was running,” recalled the former DeSantis employee. But DeSantis was dismissive of his peers. “Ron had no respect for Mark Meadows. I could see it in the way they interacted,” said a former employee. “Ron hated Kevin McCarthy. Same with Boehner. He thought he was smarter than them,” said a former employee. DeSantis was particularly shunned by social conservatives like then-Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz. He also “thought the Freedom Forum guys were crazy,” recalled a former employee. “Ron had a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign and put it on his door every time Chaffetz came into the office,” another employee said. A former employee told me that the sign, when posted, applied to all employees and visitors except Casey.

Like a very select few Republicans, DeSantis were horrified when Trump ran for president. “Ron made fun of Donald Trump more than anyone I know,” one former DeSantis staffer told me. “He thought Trump was crazy,” said another. Two staffers recalled that DeSantis was particularly shocked by Trump’s appearance at a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington in December 2015. “This room is negotiating … maybe more than any room I’ve ever talked to, maybe more Trump told the audience. “Ron came back to the office and said, ‘I can’t believe Trump said that!'” Then we pulled the old SNL videos of Trump doing Domino’s pizza commercials and standing around the computer mocking Trump for 30 minutes.

DeSantis flipped after the 2016 election. He hung out at Trump’s hotel in Washington, pushed a bill to release money from the Mueller investigation and lied to Fox News. “I liked him because he was there and he defended me very strongly on the Mueller fraud,” Trump told me in an interview last year. In November 2017, DeSantis was invited to fly with Trump on Air Force One to a rally in Pensacola, Florida. DeSantis’ congressional staff bemoaned his transformation. “Ron is one of the smartest people I’ve ever come in contact with. He had such potential but became nothing more than a Trump sucker. It’s really sad,” a former employee told me. “Ron is an intellectual. And then there’s this personality, he’s a populist Trump figure that’s very clearly made up,” said another.

DeSantis’ MAGA makeover paid off when he ran for governor in 2018. During the GOP primaries, Trump gave DeSantis two endorsements and pushed DeSantis to close a 17-point deficit over the front-runner, moderate state Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. “Ron came up right after I endorsed him,” Trump said. A month before the primary, DeSantis aired a campaign ad that showed him reading Trump’s The art of the deal of his toddler son, Mason, and encouraging his young daughter, Madison, to build a wall of toy blocks. DeSantis beat Putnam with 20 points.

DeSantis clung even more firmly to Trump when he faced off against Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum in the general election. DeSantis’ campaign went out the door when he told a Fox News interviewer, “The last thing we need to do is make a monkey of this,” by electing Gillum, who would become Florida’s first black governor. DeSantis insisted the apparent racist dog whistle was unintentional and privately blamed his staff for failing to clean up the dispute. “It’s hard for him to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong,” a campaign insider said. A month before the election, the polls were deadlocked. To right the ship, DeSantis hired Trump’s 2016 Florida campaign manager, Susie Wiles, to run his campaign. Meanwhile, a parade of MAGA royalty campaigned for DeSantis, who defeated Gillum by 30,000 votes. “Trump got Ron across the finish line,” a longtime Trump adviser told me.

The rift between the two men occurred almost immediately. DeSantis appears to be making a political calculation that whether Trump runs in 2024 or not, the 76-year-old former president has an expiration date. Trump’s list of legal and political liabilities continues to grow. In the week of August 8 alone, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to retrieve hundreds of government documents — more than 100 highly classified — Trump claimed to have taken from the White House; a Manhattan judge ordered Trump’s company to stand trial in October for criminal tax fraud; and New York Attorney General Letitia James took down Trump in her long-running investigation into his business practices.