The former president of the United States Donald Trump He charged again against the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, whom he called "DeSanctimonious" again during a rally held this Monday in Iowa.
Using derogatory nicknames "DeSanctis" y "DeSanctimonious", Trump said that the governor, who could be one of the Republican contenders for the 2024 presidential election, "fought against it every step of the way, and he's going to do it again," a report from NBC News.
Referring to DeSantis, the former US president assured the audience gathered at the Adler Theater that he will "protect Iowa's ethanol from anyone who wants to destroy it."
However, his audience was silent when he lashed out at DeSantis, which could reflect an unease among Iowa GOP voters - even some of Trump's most ardent supporters - over Republican-on-Republican political violence at a time when that a democrat, the president Joe Biden, occupies the White House.
Trump spent nearly 10 minutes attacking DeSantis, considered by many to be his most formidable opponent for the Republican nomination.
Earlier, while en route to Iowa, the former president told a group of reporters on his plane that DeSantis was disloyal, arguing that his political career would have ended if he had not supported his ultimately successful 2018 campaign.
"He was dead as a dog, he was a dead politician. He would have been working maybe for a law firm or doing something else," Trump said, according to Politic.
The Florida governor, who has not officially launched his candidacy, has embarked on a tour of the early primary states to promote his recently published memoir, and visited Iowa last Friday.
Many of Iowa's political leaders remain noncommittal to any candidate in a field that is still developing.
"I intend to meet all the presidential candidates and just take them all in," said GOP state Rep. Helena Hayes, who attended Trump's first speech after attending a meeting of state lawmakers with DeSantis on Friday.
This is not the first time that Trump has used these derogatory nicknames or attacked DeSantis, worried about having him as his potential rival in the 2024 elections.
Last November, disparaged him by referring to the politician as “an average Republican governor with excellent public relations,” and took credit for the electoral success that the former congressman had to become governor of Florida in 2018.
Last February, furthermore, charged against the television network Fox News - of a conservative tendency and a supporter of the former president - for covering a political event by the governor of Florida, and called her a RINO, an acronym for the expression "Republican in name only", with which Trump criticizes conservatives who, from his perspective, take decisions closer to democratic ideology.
The offenses and warnings Trump's statements show that he is really nervous about the possibility of being left out of the race for the White House.
DeSantis, for his part, has avoided addressing the insults and has not made a firm statement about a possible candidacy in the 2024 elections. In November, he asked people to "relax" about a possible Republican civil war between him and the former president.
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