Donald Trump is reportedly considering replacing his current nominee for defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, with Ron DeSantis – marking the latest extraordinary twist in the rocky relationship between the president-elect and the Florida governor.
Hegseth, a former Fox News weekend anchor, has been hit by a damaging series of allegations about his past since being tapped for the role in November 2023, from a sexual assault allegation to alcoholism to Islamophobic slurs and the mismanagement of a military veterans’ organisation. Hegseth has denied the allegations.
But with Republican senators expressing disquiet about his candidacy and Hegseth’s mother putting in an appearance on Fox and Friends in a last-ditch bid to clear his name, Trump is said to be looking elsewhere to none other than his ally turned sworn rival turned ally again.
Trump and DeSantis were close allies during the Republican’s first term in the White House. Trump campaigned for DeSantis’s ascent to the governor’s mansion in 2018 and later took credit for his victory, only to then take against him once his star rose during the Covid-19 pandemic and he became a conservative favorite for challenging lockdown restrictions.
That tension erupted into open hostility and bitter taunts in 2024 when DeSantis ran against Trump for the GOP presidential nomination, only to crash out early in the primaries after failing to connect with voters.
Here is a timeline of their on-again-off-again relationship:
17 November 2018
DeSantis is elected governor of Florida, defeating Democrat Andrew Gillum.
Trump, who campaigned for DeSantis in person and on Twitter, loudly celebrates his victory as the latest demonstration of his own power and influence.
March-December 2020
While Trump bungles the federal response to the Covid outbreak – making empty promises about reopening early and speculating about injecting household bleach to fight infection – DeSantis recognizes that opposition to masks and social restrictions is becoming a culture war flashpoint and uses the mood to his political advantage, greatly enhancing his national profile by speaking out against lockdowns.
January 2021
Trump leaves the White House disgraced, twice-impeached and banned from social media in the aftermath of the Capitol riot, returning to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
DeSantis, meanwhile, continues to make a name for himself, capitalizing on his pandemic popularity among Republicans by taking on LGBT+ rights and the local might of the Walt Disney Corporation, cheered on by a MAGA movement at that point looking for a less compromised alternative to Trump.
29 April 2021
Trump tells Maria Baritromo on Fox Business of DeSantis: “He’s a friend of mine. I endorsed Ron, and after I endorsed him, he took off like a rocket ship.”
On the suggestion that DeSantis might make a good successor to Mike Pence as his future running mate, Trump answers: “A lot of people like that… they love that ticket. But certainly, Ron would be considered. He’s a great guy.”
4 October 2021
Addressing the prospect of having to square up against DeSantis in a future election race, rather than joining forces with Trump top of the ticket, Trump tells Yahoo! Finance he would beat the governor with ease.
“I don’t think I will face him. I think most people would drop out, I think he would drop out,” he says.
“If I faced him, I’d beat him like I would beat everyone else. If I do run, I think that I’ll do extremely well.”
21 June 2022
Increasingly bothered by DeSantis’s fame, Trump begins to insist that the governor owes his success entirely to his support.
“I don’t know that he wants to run, you know, I have a good relationship with Ron,” he tells Newsmax about the prospect of the governor running for the White House.
“But I was very responsible for him getting elected… We’ll see what happens.”
14 September 2022
DeSantis engages in a distinctly Trumpian stunt by sending approximately 50 Venezuelan asylum seekers by air from Crestview airport in Florida to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, a Democratic stronghold.
Jealous, Trump gripes that he thought of the provocation first.
27 September 2022
DeSantis privately calls Trump a “moron” who has no business running again for the Oval Office, Vanity Fair reported.
8 November 2022
The two men hold competing rallies in the Sunshine State in the final days before the midterm elections, with Trump debuting his prized “Ron DeSanctimonious” nickname.
The governor goes on to win re-election in commanding fashion, beating Democrat Charlie Crist by a nearly 20-point margin and drawing in previously untapped support from Latinos and suburban voters.
By contrast, Trump’s preferred candidates lose races across the country from Pennsylvania to Arizona as the widely predicted “red wave” fails to materialize.
11 November 2022
The fallout from the midterms sets the rivalry simmering, with Trump suggesting he had deployed the FBI to safeguard DeSantis’s 2018 win and prevent election fraud.
Taking to Truth Social, Trump calls his new enemy an “average Republican governor with great public relations” who was “politically dead” until he turned his fortunes around.
16 November 2022
Trump announces his intention to run again for the US presidency in a low-key televised address from Mar-a-Lago.
29 January 2023
Continuing to obsessively re-litigate DeSantis’s gubernatorial win five years earlier, Trump accuses his rival of “trying to rewrite history” over his record on Covid, claiming he had “changed his tune a lot” on the introduction of vaccine mandates.
Speaking to reporters in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Trump gripes: “Ron would have not been governor if it wasn’t for me.
“When I hear that he might [run] I think it’s very disloyal… There are Republican governors that did not close their states. They’re trying to rewrite history.”
8 February 2023
Trump resorts to amplifying an unfounded smear about DeSantis relating to his short-lived career as a high school teacher in Georgia as a younger man.
18 February 2023
A new nickname, “Meatball Ron”, is reported to have been trialled by Trump as a way to trash-talk his opponent, only for him to unexpectedly deny ownership of the phrase.
“I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will,” he declares.
30 April 2023
Responding to DeSantis visiting the UK and Japan in the hope of looking statesmanlike on the world stage, Trump tries a new attack line, saying he “couldn’t care less” if the governor runs against him.
16 May 2023
Trump tells The Messenger his political opponent is a “rank amateur” whom the media does not like.
He further complains: “He’s very disloyal. He was a dead man walking. He was dead, dead as a doornail. And I revived him.”
In the same interview, Trump says Florida’s new six-week abortion ban is “too harsh” and likely to alienate voters.
24 May 2023
DeSantis finally announces his own presidential run, with a 30-second teaser video and then an X Spaces session with Elon Musk that is sunk by technical glitches.
Trump attempts to hijack his big day by launching into an insult-packed tirade against him, calling his rival “disloyal”, declaring that he “desperately needs a personality transplant” and branding him “a disciple of horrible RINO Paul Ryan.”
26 May 2023
At the start of his official campaign, DeSantis criticizes Trump as soft on crime and immigration.
1 June 2023
Asked about Trump’s barage of crude nicknames, DeSantis tells a radio station: “I think it’s so petty. I think it’s so juvenile.”
He added: “Honestly, I think that his conduct, which he’s been doing for years now, I think that’s one of the reasons he’s not in the White House now.”
21 June 2023
Trump’s campaign launches an attack ad rebuking DeSantis for his record on Covid that declares: “LOCKDOWN RON – FAILED FLORIDA!”
29 June 2023
As DeSantis begins to trail behind Trump in the polls, the ex-president takes the opportunity to declare his rival’s campaign “dead” and his polling “dropping like a rock heading to Hell.”
28 July 2023
At a Lincoln Day dinner, Trump tells his audience “not to take a chance” on DeSantis.
7 August 2023
Asked by NBC News whether he believes Trump’s false claims about winning the 2020 election, his rival answers flatly: “Of course he lost.”
21 January 2024
Seeing no path to victory after a poor showing in Iowa, DeSantis suspends his presidential campaign ahead of the New Hampshire primary and endorses Trump – days after mocking others for kneeling before the front-runner to “kiss the ring”.
16 July 2024
DeSantis champions Trump’s run for the presidency in his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
7 October 2024
DeSantis leads Florida’s response to Hurricanes Helene and Milton and endears himself to Trump by reportedly refusing to take a call from his election rival Kamala Harris and accusing her of making the disaster relief effort about herself.
29 October 2024
DeSantis stumps for Trump in Tampa in the final stages of the 2024 presidential race.
4 December 2024
DeSantis is reportedly in the running to be Trump’s next nominee for defense secretary as Hegseth becomes mired in controversy.
The development is particularly interesting given DeSantis’s former falling out with Susie Wiles, who masterminded his 2018 campaign and went on to steer Trump back to the White House and be named his next chief of staff.