GOP Mega-Donor and Ex-Trump Ambassador Endorses DeSantis: Don’t Like the ‘Name-Calling’

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) and former President Donald Trump will hold dueling fundraisers this week just miles apart in the Sunshine State. The two events take place as some former Trump donors have already jumped ship to DeSantis, including a former Trump mega-donor who served as an ambassador under the former president.

Trump will bring together his biggest donors on Thursday night for his PAC’s first fundraiser of the year at Mar-a-Lago, which Politico reported has been billed “as an intimate candlelight dinner.”

DeSantis, meanwhile, is set to host a much larger, three-day gathering four miles down the road at the Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach.

Politico’s Alex Isenstadt wrote on Tuesday that DeSantis’s event will “be scrutinized for which donors attend — including how many of them were once Trump backers who may be looking to defect from the former president to the Florida governor.”

Isenstadt noted that DeSantis is currently making all the standard moves a candidate makes before jumping into a presidential race. The governor is about to release a book and is traveling the country to raise his national profile. Additionally, DeSantis has already won over many former Trump donors.

“The list of defectors includes Arizona donor Don Tapia, a retired electrical company executive who served as Trump’s ambassador to Jamaica. Tapia was a six-figure contributor to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns — but said that he had decided to back DeSantis should he run in 2024,” Isenstadt reported.

“The name-calling has turned a lot of people off,” Tapia told Politico of his decision to ditch Trump. “Let me tell you, we don’t like that.”

Tapia also “predicted that the retreat would ‘overwhelmingly’ be attended by former Trump supporters” looking at potentially supporting DeSantis.

For his part, the Florida governor will reportedly give a “data-focused briefing on the reelection win” and discuss his recent political agenda, “including his ongoing fight with Disney, his decision to send planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and his battle against what he has derided as ‘woke’ liberals.”

Trump has already begun attacking DeSantis in earnest, calling him everything from a RINO (Republican in name only) to a “globalist” to even insinuating he was once a “groomer” of young girls.

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