Former President Donald Trump claimed that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) cried when he asked for his endorsement ahead of his state’s 2018 gubernatorial election.
“He’s dead, he’s leaving the race. He’s coming and asking me, asking for an endorsement,” Trump told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. “He said, ‘If you support me, I will win’ and a tear fell from his eye.”
Trump has repeatedly told the story of how he plucked DeSantis from obscurity and led him to the governorship with the endorsement — but the tears are a new addition to the story.
Trump has cried in a number of other anecdotes over the years, particularly in stories involving “tough people” who never let him cry in his presence.
But these stories are not always true.
He has mentioned, for example, that farmers and ranchers cried behind him when he spoke at the 2017 event.
The former president has repeatedly attacked DeSantis amid reports he could challenge Trump for the GOP nomination for president in 2024. Trump has called him “disloyal” and threatened to reveal dirt on the governor.
But DeSantis was a former Trump aide, not only relying on the president’s endorsement at the time, but using his name heavily in the 2018 campaign, leading to one of the strangest ads of the cycle: