When he first ran for the governorship of Florida in 2018, Ron DeSantis was so grateful for Donald Trump’s endorsement, and so desperate to appeal to his supporters, that he filmed a campaign ad showing him reading aloud to his infant son from Trump: The Art of the Deal and demonstrating how to “build the wall” using toy blocks. The video then showed him putting his son to bed wearing a “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) sleep suit, with a Donald Trump flag draped over the side of the cot. At one point a message on the screen flashed up: “RON DESANTIS: PITBULL TRUMP DEFENDER”.
Four years later, celebrating his re-election as governor by an almost 20-percentage point margin in the US midterms on 8 November, DeSantis did not even mention Trump’s name. Walking out on to the stage with his family to deliver his victory speech in Tampa, he called it “a win for the ages” and claimed to have “rewritten the political map”. During this campaign, it was not Trump who was depicted as DeSantis’s benefactor, but God. “And on the eighth day, God looked down at his planned paradise and said, I need a protector,” intoned the narrator during one television commercial as it cut to footage of the Florida governor. “So God made a fighter.”
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