Donald Trump may be preparing to go for the presidency again in 2024 and he said he believes he knows what would happen if the battle came to him and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the Republican nomination.
In a Sunday interview with Yahoo Finance the 45th President of the United States said he does not believe anyone can stand in his way of being the Republican nominee if he decides he wants to campaign for it, Fox News reported.
Less than a week before he returns to the state that kicks off the race for the White House, former President Trump says in a new interview that if he runs again for president, most other Republicans would “drop out.”
But if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose standing among conservatives has skyrocketed over the past year and a half, also makes a bid for the 2024 GOP nomination, Trump emphasizes “I’d beat him.”
The former president made his comments in excerpts released Sunday from an interview with Yahoo Finance that’s scheduled to be published on Monday.
Trump remains very popular and influential among Republican voters and GOP politicians as he continues to play a kingmaker’s role in party politics and repeatedly flirts with launching a third straight presidential campaign, to try and return to the White House.
Trump remains the overwhelming front runner in all of the extremely early polls in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race. But in hypothetical questions with Trump not on the ballot, DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence top the large field of potential contenders in most surveys.Â
“I don’t think I will face him,” he said of the popular Florida governor in a potential match for the nomination in 2024. “I think most people would drop out, I think he would drop out.”
But he said that “if I faced him, I’d beat him like I would beat everyone else.”
Last week Gov. DeSantis dismissed talk of him vying for the Republican nomination for president in 2024 when he spoke to Fox News host Sean Hannity saying, “I’m not considering anything beyond doing my job.”
“We’ve got a lot of stuff going on in Florida. I’m going to be running for reelection next year and we’re also working on a lot of things in the state beyond just the governor’s race,” he said.
In a recent interview Trump said that there is one thing that would stop him from attempting to secure the nomination for president.
The Daily Mail reports:
Trump made the remark in a phone interview on Friday night, ahead of his planned rally in Perry, Georgia on Saturday to support his picks in key Republican primary races.
Asked by Real America’s Voice host David Brody what might prevent him from running again, Trump responded: “Well, I don’t — I guess a bad call from a doctor or something, right?”
“Things happen. Through God, they happen,” he added. “But I feel so good.”
Whereas Biden has often drawn criticism for a light schedule and not being available to the press for days on end, Trump was often praised for his energy while in the White House, often sleeping just four hours a night or less.
In August, during an interview on “The Truth with Lisa Boothe” podcast to talk about Afghanistan, Trump also implied that he intends to run for president again while speaking with Fox News personality Lisa Boothe.
Trump said he’s still deciding on another presidential run, but he teased that his mind may already be made up.
“We won [the election] twice. I’ve won it twice and now I have to win it again. I guess if we’re going to save the country,” Trump said.
“I’ll make a decision,” Trump added.
“It won’t be maybe for a little while. You know, a lot of people would like to see a decision immediately,” he said. “But perhaps there’s also a big group, including maybe myself, that would like to see it after the midterms.”
Trump certainly seemed to imply he at least wants to run again in 2024.
The 45th President went on to slam Biden for the crisis in Afghanistan.
“Nobody’s ever seen embarrassment like this. Between the border and Afghanistan … I guess Afghanistan blows everything away. There’s never been anything like that. Such stupidity and incompetence,” Trump said.
“We had [Afghanistan] so under control like you wouldn’t believe. I dealt with a — I dealt with the Taliban at the highest level,” Trump told Boothe. “The military would have come out last, not first. That was the big mistake — they took the military and they left 35,000 or 45,000 people, plus a lot of others right in harm’s way … This was a horrible miscarriage.”
“You took the military out and you just laid this to potential slaughter. I mean, Jimmy Carter had a few, very small number of hostages [in Iran] … [Biden] has potentially 45,000 American hostages. Nobody’s ever seen anything like this,” Trump said of Americans trapped in Afghanistan.