Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis said it was too early for Republicans to focus on the next presidential election when asked about the divide in the Democratic Party during a news conference the morning after Trump’s announcement. Declining to name the former president, DeSantis, a potential Trump opponent in 2024, said he was instead focused on the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff and his gubernatorial priorities in Florida. “We just finished this election. People need to relax a little bit on some of this stuff, I mean seriously,” DeSantis said. The 44-year-old Republican governor continued: “At the end of the day, it’s been a big election, we’ve got a Georgia runoff, but to me that’s fine, what else do we need to do to continue to make Florida lead? We will focus on that.” The sentiment was echoed by top Republicans in Ohio, New Hampshire and Washington, as the GOP faced growing internal tensions and questions about its future after a deeply disappointing midterm cycle. History showed that Republicans should have celebrated huge gains last week, but the sweeping victory predicted by party leaders did not materialize as Trump loyalists were defeated in many states. Democrats held the Senate, while Republicans won a slim majority in the House on Wednesday. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine deflected a question about Trump’s announcement at the Republican Governors Association meeting in Orlando on Wednesday. “It’s a little early to comment on the presidential race,” DeWine said as he entered a forum on “The Future of the GOP.” “We’re still trying to process what happened a week ago,” said DeWine, who won re-election by 25 points after refusing to buy into Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. But Trump won’t make it easy for his party to ignore 2024, even with the opening contests of the next presidential primary season likely more than a year away. Trump launched his third presidential bid Tuesday night before an audience of several hundred supporters in a chandelier-lit ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago club. This is even as political parties have yet to set their primary voting schedules. “America’s comeback starts right now,” Trump said. The former president, who sparked a deadly insurgency after losing his 2020 re-election bid, had hoped to launch his 2024 campaign with the glow of resounding GOP midterm victories. Instead, he entered the race at a moment of deep political vulnerability after a string of sharp losses that many party leaders blamed on him. High-profile Republican Senate and gubernatorial candidates across Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin who parroted Trump’s baseless 2020 conspiracy theories were defeated. DeSantis, meanwhile, won re-election by nearly 20 points in what has historically been a swing state. With party activists openly encouraging DeSantis to run for president, Trump has been increasingly critical of the Florida governor in recent weeks — even unveiling a new nickname: Ron DeSanctimonious. Asked about Trump’s crickets on Monday, DeSantis quipped, “Look at the scoreboard.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, an increasingly critical Trump critic, declined to weigh in on the early 2024 debate when asked, though he acknowledged that the Republican Party “turned off a lot of those centrist voters” in the 2022 midterms. “The way I’m going to go into this presidential primary is to stay out of it. I have no dog in this fight,” McConnell said. On the other side of the Capitol, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Trump loyalist who hopes to become speaker of the House if the GOP takes a majority in that chamber, walked away from reporters Wednesday when asked if he would support Trump’s nomination for 2024. But a handful of Republican elected officials have already endorsed Trump’s nascent campaign — including House Republican Conference Chairwoman Rep. Elisa Stefanik, RN.Y. and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. In New Hampshire, which is set to host the 2024 GOP presidential primary, Gov. Chris Sununu predicted few would pay attention to Trump’s announcement in the short term. “He’s not going to clear the field,” Sununu told Fox News, declining to rule out a 2024 presidential run of his own. Sununu, a Republican, won re-election by more than 15 points after pushing back against Trump’s lies in the election. Meanwhile, New Hampshire Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc, a Trump loyalist, lost by 9 points. “You could argue he’s never been weaker politically,” Sununu said of Trump. “It’s really a defensive announcement. Therefore, I think it will be a bit of news and we will all move on. There will still be a lot of people entering this race – probably not until late ’23.” The conservative media has also been cool with Trump’s 2024 political ambitions. The New York Post, one of Trump’s favorite hometown papers, marked the start of Trump’s campaign with just this line at the bottom of its front page: “Florida man makes announcement.”
People reported from New York. AP writers Mike Schneider in Orlando, Farnoush Amiri and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed.
