What Did Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump Talk About in That Meeting?

Ron DeSantis is apparently considering helping the man who once called him “Ron DeSancitmonius,” “Meatball Ron,” and “Pudding Fingers.”

DeSantis privately met with Donald Trump in Miami Sunday morning, according to The Washington Post. Trump’s hope is that DeSantis will help him raise a lot of money for his presidential campaign, as the former president grows increasingly desperate for cash.

Trump and DeSantis clashed very early on in the 2024 presidential race, with DeSantis becoming an early favorite of Republican donors eager to shed Trump and his baggage, in spite (or possibly because) of the Florida governor’s disturbing authoritarian streak. A story that DeSantis once ate pudding with his fingers became fodder for an entire campaign ad from a Trump-aligned political action committee. Trump had quite a few nicknames for the Florida governor, calling him Meatball Ron, Rob, Ron DeSanctimonious, and Ron DeSanctus— and even went as far as to call him a “groomer.”

In the end, DeSantis failed to gain ground on Trump in the polls, quickly alienating voters with his weird people skills and mannerisms. Nikki Haley ended up overtaking him among Republican voters desperate for an alternative to Trump, and DeSantis dropped out of the race in January.

Now, DeSantis is probably looking at the future and seeing that he doesn’t have one without at least tolerance from Trump. The two reportedly haven’t spoken since the primaries, even though DeSantis endorsed Trump the day he dropped out. The fact that DeSantis scoffed at a proposal for Florida to pay Trump’s legal bills probably didn’t help, and who can blame him? The former president’s bills keep piling up, and he reportedly can’t even pay his legal counsel.

One of Congress’s most powerful Republicans apparently feels powerless in the face of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Sitting for an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained that he didn’t see any other option than to endorse the GOP presidential nominee—despite having made previous declarations against Trump, including blaming him for the violent events that unfolded on January 6.

“The issue is, what kind of influence, even if I had chosen to get involved in the presidential election, what kind of influence would I have had?” McConnell said after insinuating he was duty-bound as the most powerful Republican in the Senate to support the candidate that Republican delegates voted for.

“I’m the Republican leader of the Senate. What we do here is try to make law,” McConnell continued. “I like us to be in the majority. I’m spending my political time and my political capital, whatever amount I have, on trying to flip the Senate so that my successor is the majority leader and not the minority leader.”

In a heated back-and-forth with host Margaret Brennan, McConnell continued to dodge questions that poked at his purported policy agenda, skirt overtly offering advice to Trump’s campaign, and refuse to admit that he was ideologically more aligned with President Joe Biden’s idea of American leadership.

“Look, I wouldn’t have withdrawn from Afghanistan. I wouldn’t have submitted four budgets in a row for defense that don’t even keep up with inflation. I’ve got plenty of differences with the current administration,” McConnell said, referring to actions taken during Biden’s administration. “Whether I will have differences with the next administration remains to be seen. And so I’m not going to predict what might happen on this issue. I know what I think and it doesn’t make any difference what the outcome of the presidential election is. I’m going to be focusing on this remainder of my time in the Senate.”

McConnell has struggled in recent months to unify his party, even around typically popular Republican issues. He is one of a shrinking number of GOP lawmakers who support sending more military aid to Ukraine in its counteroffensive against Russia, and he was forced to watch as his party tanked a bipartisan border security bill at Trump’s behest.

The Kentucky Republican has spoken out against the right’s fight for a new brand of American isolationism—which includes Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO and Republican infighting over aid for Ukraine, among other national security issues—but he placed the blame on former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson rather than Trump.

“He had a huge audience among rank and file Republicans. And I think it was very destructive, very impactful on regular Republican voters and created a big problem,” McConnell said about Carlson, adding that the political conspiracy peddler “certainly ended up where he should have been all along, interviewing [Russian President] Vladimir Putin.”

An Arizona state lawmaker indicted for his involvement in Donald Trump’s 2020 fake elector scheme has announced that he’s getting a promotion in the Republican Party.

State Senator Jake Hoffman was charged by Arizona on Wednesday alongside 17 other people, including Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and former attorney Rudy Giuliani, for orchestrating a scheme to use fake electors to flip Arizona’s 2020 election results over to Trump. The former president is named in the documents as an unindicted co-conspirator. But on Saturday, Hoffman revealed that the conservative party had rewarded that behavior by electing him as a state delegate for the GOP.

“I’m humbled and honored to have been elected as the next RNC National Committeeman for Arizona!,” Hoffman said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“For the next 4 years I will work tirelessly to ensure that the RNC makes Arizona its #1 priority not only in 2024, but every year,” he wrote, continuing to decry Democrats as “fascists” who want to “destroy opportunity and prosperity” for Arizonans.

“Make no mistake, our Party is unified, focused, and motivated to win the White House for President @realDonaldTrump, the US Senate seat against far-Left extremist Ruben Gallego, the Legislative Majority at the State Capitol, and other offices up and down the ballot,” Hoffman said.

On a web page that lists the lawmaker as a 2021 fellow with the The Club for Growth Foundation—a fiscally conservative nonprofit funded by billionaires Richard Uihlein and Jeff Yass that donated roughly $20 million to the campaigns of 42 Republicans who worked to overturn the 2020 presidential election results—Hoffman is described as someone whose work on a digital campaign for Trump “played a key role in helping elect” the former president in 2016. The site also notes that Hoffman was invited to attend Trump’s inauguration, had visited the White House for several meetings, and was allegedly described by Trump as one of his “very good friends.”

Still, Trump didn’t seem to outwardly notice the local win for his supposed good friend, failing to acknowledge it on TruthSocial and opting instead to spend the day posting about his New York hush-money case, 2024 presidential election polls, and the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

All of the indicted individuals in Arizona are facing the same slew of charges, which includes counts for conspiracy, forgery, fraudulent schemes and practices, and fraudulent schemes and artifices—the last of which holds a potential sentence of up to five years in prison.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has doubled down on her decision to shoot and kill her pet puppy—and the Trump camp isn’t happy.

“The fact is, South Dakota law states that dogs who attack and kill livestock can be put down. Given that Cricket had shown aggressive behavior toward people by biting them, I decided what I did,” Noem said in a long post on X (formerly Twitter) Sunday. “Whether running the ranch or in politics, I have never passed on my responsibilities to anyone else to handle. Even if it’s hard and painful. I followed the law and was being a responsible parent, dog owner, and neighbor.”

The story, which comes from Noem’s new book, was seen by many as a plea to Donald Trump (who doesn’t like dogs) as to why she’s the right choice for his vice president. But perhaps unsurprisingly, a story about puppy murder has not earned her any plaudits from Trump’s campaign.

“Governor Noem just keeps proving over and over that she’s a lightweight,” one person close to the Trump campaign told Semafor. “We can’t afford a Kamala problem.”

Trump has enough problems of his own these days, especially with damaging new information coming out of his hush money trial each day. The last thing he wants is for a running mate who attracts her own negative coverage. In addition to her dog shooting story, several Native tribes in Noem’s state have banned her from their territories over her racist comments. Her mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic also led to a spike in cases in Native communities, and she tried to prevent the tribes from implementing their own pandemic safety measures. Meanwhile, she’s also in the press for a rumored affair with longtime Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski.

The latest speculation about Trump’s VP choice is someone with a lot less drama and a bit more moderation just south of Noem: North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, whose major issue would be the same one that plagued him during his failed run for president: a lack of name recognition.

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial is revealing new details from his life, including things that even some of the people in his inner circle didn’t know.

“I’m talking to these Trump senior advisers… a lot of them are learning about this in real time,” reporter Kristen Holmes said Friday on CNN. “They have no idea what’s going on inside the courtroom.”

Trump can’t communicate with anyone while he’s in the Manhattan court, and only a small number of his aides are in the (apparently frigid) courtroom with him. That means the rest of them have to keep up with media reports—and find out new revelations at the same time as the public.

“It is exactly as salacious as they thought it was going to be. There was no mistake. We know what is at the heart of this alleged cover-up for an alleged affair with a porn star,” Holmes said.

So far, the court has heard testimony from David Pecker, the former CEO of American Media Inc. and ex-publisher of the National Enquirer, who has provided damaging information about Trump’s activities and even how many of Trump’s associates were involved. Trump has been hesitant to attack Pecker, leading some observers to suspect that he’s afraid of the tabloid magnate.

Trump faces 34 felony charges for allegedly falsifying business records with the intent to further an underlying crime for having his former fixer and attorney, Michael Cohen, pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an affair before the 2016 presidential election. Both Cohen and Daniels are expected to testify in the trial, meaning that more shocking details are forthcoming.