Trump-DeSantis rivalry grows as GOP candidates gather in Florida

KISSIMMEE, Fla. (AP) — A booth at the Florida Republican Party’s Freedom Summit made swift business of Donald Trump merchandise on Saturday, selling everything from socks to bathtub rubber ducks that paid tribute to the former president.

Vendor Peter Crotty also had Ron DeSantis T-shirts. But he reduced those items from their original $25 down to $5, an 80% discount on the Florida governor’s name. The excess inventory needed to go, Crotty said.

It was just one sign of DeSantis’ challenges in the 2024 Republican primary fight. Barely two months from the first nominating ballots being cast, Trump is flaunting his advantages by trying to embarrass the governor in the two rivals’ shared home state, where party activists on Saturday cheered any mention of the former president and booed at any criticisms of the GOP 2024 front-runner.

“We’re going to win the Florida primary for the third straight time, and we’re going to win the state by a landslide next November,” Trump told a boisterous crowd Saturday evening, before calling to the stage several Florida lawmakers who switched their endorsements from DeSantis ahead of Saturday’s Florida Freedom Summit.

Trump and his newest backers stood beneath graphics that read: “Florida is Trump Country.”

It was a show of strength for Trump in a state where DeSantis has controlled state politics since garnering Trump’s endorsement in 2018 on his way to winning the first of two gubernatorial elections. Now, two months before the first balloting in the 2024 presidential nomination process, the two men have an increasingly personal and crude rivalry, and the second-term governor faces the reality that Trump has dominated national Republican politics since he launched his first White House bid in 2015, when DeSantis was a little-known Florida congressman.

Trump was more than a half-hour into a stemwinding speech Saturday before he mentioned DeSantis, and he did so by ticking through polling results suggesting his wide national lead among Republican voters.

Trump later said, in a mocking tone, that DeSantis begged for his backing in 2018: “I endorsed him and he became a rocket ship in 24 hours.… Now he’s like a wounded falling bird