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While a cold war had been brewing between Desantis and Trump for months, Trump just initiated open hostilities in a series of tweets on Truth Social:
Trump clearly wants no primary challenges for the 2024 election, which is why he's gone out of his way to ensure some R hopefuls wouldn't start campaigns if he was in. Desantis, however, pointedly refused to rule out a 2024 campaign of his own, much to Trump's annoyance. As of the time of writing, Desantis currently has almost 2x the chance to become the next president on Election Betting Odds as Trump (29% vs 17.8%), and the midterm elections helped Desantis and hurt Trump. Anecdotally, I've seen a bit of movement towards Desantis on usual Trump strongholds like 4chan, with some saying Desantis is like Trump but "he actually does the stuff he says instead of just tweeting about it", although it's hard to get a representative sample on an anonymous image board for obvious reasons.
Okay, random question, but why does Trump want to be president again so bad? What exactly does he get out if it? He has enough money and power to have a dynasty in his own right. Is it for his ego? He was already president once, so it's not like he should have to prove to himself or anyone else that he can do it. And I doubt he thinks that next time around the media will be nicer to him and he'll ultimately be remembered as a great president. Or that he'll be able to accomplish much more than he did in his previous term, given how much opposition he's bound to receive in everything he will try (given the terror and hatred in the media and the Left due to Jan 6, I'd say take all previous opposition he's ever faced and multiply it by 200). So why would he want it so bad?
I selfishly feel like all he is doing in making life harder for people like me who are indifferent to Trump, but refuse to hate Trump, and who get annoyed with they see everyone around them hating Trump. My wife and I fought about as hard over Trump during the 2020 election and Jan 6th as anything, mostly because I refused to unequivocally condemn him. I fear his next presidency would tear my life apart.
Trump is a narcissist so he wants to win and I say that as someone who likes him. I also think he wants another chance to prove that he was right. He prioritizes vindicating himself because he doesnt adhere to any strict ideology.
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