Philip Bump, Washington Post: “Nothing frustrates Trump more obviously and viscerally than coming in second. Which is not great news for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. For months, DeSantis has been the focus of speculation about the 2024 Republican nomination contest. He has been adept at navigating the politics of the coronavirus pandemic (including managing to overstate his success without much pushback) and at leveraging culture-war fights to maintain the media spotlight. He signed new restrictions on voting in the state during a segment on ‘Fox & Friends.’ But despite that, it was still consistently the case that Trump was outperforming him in (very early, very sketchy) 2024 primary straw polling. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, DeSantis was the top pick of attendees – only when Trump was excluded from the competition. Over the weekend, a straw poll conducted at the Western Conservative Summit gauging views of potential 2024 candidates again had DeSantis in the lead. This time, though, Trump was one of the trailing competitors. Straw polls are only slightly more useful than wearing an anti-meteorite helmet, sure. But, again, Trump is not one to let even a random poll like this slide.”
“Consider what happened in April. After a political action committee affiliated with former Trump adviser John Bolton touted polling suggesting Trump’s grip on the party had weakened, Trump’s team pushed back hard. This broadly unimportant question in the moment – how much fealty did Trump engender – was something Trump simply couldn’t allow to stand without contest. He has also repeatedly trumpeted polling like that survey at CPAC, as surely as he once began his 2016 primary rallies by listing the recent polling showing him in the lead. Trump has clearly been watching DeSantis in the rearview mirror for a while. On multiple occasions over the past few months, he has made passive-aggressive comments meant, in his unsubtle way, to diminish DeSantis’s standing. There was the time in April he suggested DeSantis would be a good running mate, a classic politician move aimed at showing dominance.”