Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is on a world tour of sorts, despite the fact that things aren’t necessarily so great in his home state right now. The presumptive Republican nominee for President and the biggest rival to former President Donald Trump is traveling to Japan, and boy does Trump have something to say about it.
The fact that Trump continues to hammer away at DeSantis illustrates that Trump considers him a real threat, and it seems to be working (at least a little). After he visits Japan, DeSantis plans to travel to South Korea, Israel, and the U.K. for an “international trade mission” and to “strengthen economic relationships,” per the Miami Herald.
Trump took to his favorite mouthpiece of late — Truth Social — and took some shots at the presumptive Republican nominee, saying he needed to “up his game” to “remove the stain from his failing campaign.”
“The ‘Consultants’ are sending DeSanctus, and demanding he go immediately, on an emergency Round the World tour of U.S representative population countries, like South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Israel, in order to up his game and see if he can remove the stain from his failing campaign. Bad poll numbers! Perhaps he can, and perhaps he can’t, who really knows, but he’ll have plenty of time to think as he sits alone, on his tax payer funded airplane, riding it out and thinking, WHY???”
“DeSanctus” — a slight variation on Trump’s usual sobriquet for the Governor: “Desanctimonius” — but with Trump you never know if he’s making a point or a typo, so it could go either way. Regardless, Trump also wants everyone to know DeSantis doesn’t have his own plane. Pretty good flex if you think about it.
DeSantis is traveling with Secretary of State Cord Byrd, Secretary of Commerce Laura DiBella, and his wife Casey. He’s trying to shore up his foreign policy credentials after a pretty clear mistake when he called the war between the Ukraine and Russia a “territorial dispute.”
After the pushback he changed his tone and called Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal.”