Trump elevates DeSantis

DeSantis was a littleknown Florida congressman in 2017, when Trump, who was then the president, spotted him on television and took keen interest. DeSantis, an Ivy League-educated military veteran and smoothtalking defender of the new president, was exactly what Trump liked in a politician.

It wasn’t long before Trump blessed DeSantis’s bid for governor and sent in staff to help him, lifting the lawmaker to a victory over a better-known rival for the party’s nomination.

DeSantis survived the general election and has often governed in a style that mirrors his patron, slashing at the left and scrapping with the news media. But that alone doesn’t placate Trump. As with other Republicans he has endorsed, the former president appears to take a kind of ownership interest in DeSantis — and to believe

that he is owed dividends and deference.

“Look, I helped Ron DeSantis at a level that nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said in an interview for a forthcoming book, “Insurgency,” on the rightward shift of the Republican Party, by New York Times reporter Jeremy W. Peters. Trump said he believed DeSantis “didn’t have a chance” of winning without his help.

The former president’s expectation of deference from DeSantis is a reminder to other Republicans that a Trump endorsement comes with a price, a demand that could prove particularly consequential should he run again and have a stable of Republican lawmakers in his debt.

At times, Trump has sought to kindle his relationship with DeSantis. He has suggested the governor would be a strong choice for vice president. Similar courtship has helped win deference from other potential rivals. But DeSantis has not relented.

“I wonder why the guy won’t say he won’t run against me,” Trump has said to several associates and advisers, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.