Donald Trump's army of online trolls are increasingly confident they've helped bury Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential race, but they want to make sure he's "dead on arrival" for the next election cycle.
DeSantis was running neck-and-neck with Trump in some polls before entering the race, but he's usually more than 40 points behind now and struggling to raise money.
Now the former president's advisers and right-wing social media influencers are already looking ahead to the general election -- and the one after that, reported The Daily Beast.
“He still comes up in conversation, but the fire is gone because he’s already toast,” said one Trump adviser. “It was fun nuking him, though.”
A Republican strategist noticed that influencers and the official Trump campaign had already moved on to attacking President Joe Biden over the economy and his age, but there's still some lingering bitterness toward DeSantis for launching a primary challenge against the former president in the first place.
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"Things got so personal in the primary that I don’t think Team Trump will ever fully take their boot off of Ron’s tiny neck until they feel like he’s not just dead on arrival in 2024, but also dead on arrival in 2028," said another Trump adviser. “The memes got out of control, though.”
Multiple Trump allies compared the lingering attacks on DeSantis as running up the score in a football game, but the dynamic is approaching what one of the Florida governor's leading allies described as the end-game scenario for the faltering candidate.
“What would concern me is if I woke up one day and Trump and his team were not attacking Never Back Down [PAC] and Ron DeSantis," Chris Jankowski, the CEO of that DeSantis-aligned PAC, said two months ago. “That would be concerning. Other than that, we’ve got them right where we want them.”
