WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Former President Donald Trump urged his top rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to "get home" to his state during a speech at the Turning Point Action conference here Saturday.
"We are totally dominating DeSantis right here in the state of Florida," Trump said. "So we want him to get home and take care of insurance because you have the highest insurance in the nation."
Trump, who leads DeSantis by a wide margin in national polling of the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, has touched on that concept before. But this was the first time he accused DeSantis of neglecting his duties since the Florida governor formally entered the Oval Office sweepstakes in May.
Specifically, Trump took aim at a recent exodus of insurance companies that Florida's chief financial officer blamed on firms "playing politics."
The former president's remarks were delivered to a ballroom packed with several thousand attendees of a conference convened by Turning Point Action, a conservative nonprofit organization that grew out of Trump's MAGA movement and aims to engage voters in the political process.
A DeSantis spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump's attack.
While DeSantis is Trump's leading rival for the nomination, the Florida governor's poll numbers have stalled in recent months. Trump leads DeSantis, 53% to 21%, in the Real Clear Politics average of recent national surveys, with no other candidate in double digits.
DeSantis, who reported Saturday that he had raised $20.1 million in the first six weeks of his campaign, has been trying to reassure top supporters in recent days that he can defeat Trump. In a July 6 memo to "friends and family" that was obtained exclusively by NBC News, the DeSantis campaign wrote that it is "ready to win this marathon."
But the memo also pointed to challenges for DeSantis. The campaign vowed not to spend precious campaign dollars on later-voting states as it focuses on the first four on the primary calendar, and the memo promised that Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., perceived as a possible threat to DeSantis in some early states, will soon receive "appropriate scrutiny."
