President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis could soon clash in a proxy war over a recent DeSantis appointment, a White House official hinted Wednesday.
For the position of Florida chief financial officer, DeSantis announced Wednesday morning that he tapped Florida Sen. Blaise Ingoglia, a longtime ally of DeSantis, much to the chagrin of the White House and Trump’s preferred pick of Sen. Joe Gruters, who has sometimes clashed with DeSantis.
“We have not taken a hard line against Blaise – doesn’t mean we won’t,” a senior White House official told Politico Wednesday. “If we want to beat Blaise, we will beat him.”
Trump has long backed Gruters for the position, openly calling on DeSantis to appoint him when the position became vacant, which it did in March. In an apparent effort to ward off pro-Trump critics of the appointment, DeSantis proactively attacked Gruters’ record in the Florida Senate as making him a poor choice for the role.
“Joe Gruters has taken major positions that are totally contrary from what our voter base wants to do,” DeSantis said Wednesday, Politico reported.
“So if George Washington rose from the dead and came back and tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Will you appoint Joe Gruters CFO?’ My response would be ‘no.’ I can’t do that without betraying the voters that elected me to lead this state in a conservative direction.”
Key Trump allies, including Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL), suggested DeSantis was making a mistake in defying Trump’s wishes, particularly after DeSantis and Trump’s public feud in fighting for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
“If Ron DeSantis wants to campaign against Donald Trump again, he clearly didn’t learn after what happened last time,” Fine told Politico on Wednesday. “It says a lot about how much Ronald values his relationship with Trump.”
Several GOP operatives and lobbyists, speaking with Politico on the condition of anonymity, said that DeSantis’ team held conversations with Gruters leading up to Wednesday to see him drop out of consideration for the CFO position, and instead take one of several other government jobs, but to no avail.
The White House official reiterated, however, that if Trump wants to step in and see his preferred candidate appointed as CFO, he maintains the ability to see it done.
“The fact is, the president can and will beat any candidate he chooses to put his weight behind,” the official told Politico.
