Conservative pundits are fawning over DeSantis’ cruel political stunt to fly immigrants to Massachusetts. Trump thinks the "credit" should be hisBY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG, ADAM RAWNSLEY
IN RECENT DAYS, Donald Trump has privately voiced his anger over Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis sending planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Trump’s displeasure, however, has nothing to do with moral revulsions at the governor using human beings as unsuspecting pawns for a political attack. Instead, Trump is telling allies and confidants he’s outraged that DeSantis seems to think he’s allowed to steal the ex-president’s mantle as both media star, and as undocumented-immigrant-basher-in-chief.
Since the Florida Republican — possibly under false pretenses — flew migrants from the Texas-Mexico border to Massachusetts, Trump has pointedly complained to some of his closest associates that DeSantis is attempting to take the national news cycle away from him, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone.
Trump has fumed over all the praise DeSantis’ action has been receiving in influential conservative circles lately — such as on right-wing media like Fox News — and has privately accused DeSantis of doing this largely to generate a 2024 polling boost for himself among GOP voters. (Earlier this month, Trump and his political operation blasted out a brief statement claiming, “Mar-a-Lago raid gave Trump a 10-point boost over DeSantis with Republican primary voters, poll shows.”)
The twice-impeached former president, the sources say, has also vented that DeSantis’ latest stunt was yet another one of “my idea[s]” that the governor allegedly stole from Trump.
Neither Trump nor DeSantis have officially declared a 2024 presidential run, though both have laid the groundwork for a national campaign. Trump remains the leader of the Republican Party and its most popular national figure. But DeSantis has a similar MAGA brand and in recent months has made gains in the polls — and among the conservative elite. Conspicuously, in the days since the migrants arrived on Martha’s Vineyard, Trump has publicly commented on it only sparingly. He has also declined to profusely laud DeSantis in the ways that his fellow Republican icons have repeatedly done so. The former president is famous for quickly and verbosely responding to any number of headlines or controversies — political, legal, pop-cultural, and so on — thus making his general omissions regarding DeSantis and the stunt even more glaring. And Trump’s apparent sense of right-flank vulnerability on immigration was evident on his social media platform, Truth Social. There, the former president spent his weekend intermittently teasing his alleged plans to run again in 2024 while hailing his own record of cruelty to asylum seekers. A Trump spokesperson did not provide a comment on this story.