DeSantis Campaign Video Hints at National Aims and Draws Trump’s Ire
In a four-minute video produced for the DeSantis campaign, the Florida governor’s advisers, including some Republican allies, preview the themes of his political future and present Trump’s political interests as the most important ones for him to pursue.
“The first order of business is to get a great job,” DeSantis says in the video, as he begins his day as a newly minted federal judge. “We need to do our job.”
The video also contains a link to an open letter that the governor is planning to send to the president and his allies ahead of the 2020 election, a campaign to get them to “stop the witch hunt and stop the impeachment,” and a video of a call with DeSantis’s staff in which he makes an impassioned plea that they have to do something to stop his enemies.
It’s a stark departure from the governor’s past, when he appeared before the cameras and talked about his relationship with Trump, and the ways he has helped his state and his family.
The new video, obtained exclusively by The Daily Beast, is being shown before DeSantis will leave the campaign trail on Saturday for a nine-day trip to New Hampshire, Iowa and Wisconsin that will begin on Monday.
The new video also features DeSantis’s announcement to campaign with the president in Miami on Saturday night, before DeSantis launches his Senate bid against incumbent Republican Sen. Bill Nelson in two weeks.
The Florida governor says he hopes to be the Republican presidential nominee, and the video shows DeSantis using his relationship with Trump as a point of strength.
“I think I have more flexibility because of this relationship, and I think, in some respects, that’s probably the most important thing I can do,” he says in the video, before adding, “You can’t run for the presidency and say you’re running on the principles of the person you just said you’re going to take a bullet for after you take office, which is what Bill Nelson is doing.”
During his Florida campaign, DeSantis has appeared with Trump twice in public, and
