Clockwise from top left: Gov. Ron Desantis meets with President Trump, Sen. Josh Hawley, then-Rep. Kristi Noem, Sen. Rand Paul.
On a Fox News podcast with Lisa Boothe, President Donald Trump celebrated the GOP’s next generation of leaders, including names like Sens. Josh Hawley, Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz, and Govs. Ron DeSantis and Kristi Noem, as well as his former Press Secretary and current gubernatorial candidate in Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Curt Mills writes in The American Conservative:
The ex-president and his entourage both teased a new social media platform and unveiled a new slate of favored political players on Monday. Though they were evasive on the details.
“The Republican Party is stacked,” pronounced former President Donald Trump to podcast host and Fox News personality Lisa Boothe, in an interview published Monday.
“Ron DeSantis is doing a really good job in Florida,” Trump told Boothe, as he unveiled something of a list of who he thought had been naughty and who had been nice.
“I think Josh Hawley has shown some real courage in going after big tech … Somebody that’s been really terrific is Ted Cruz.” Continuing, Trump said: “Rand Paul has been great … Sarah Huckabee is going to do great in Arkansas. I think that Kristi Noem has done a terrific job.”
Here are several other implications of Trump’s coming up for air this week, after two months of relative silence.
First, Trump appears to be doing Ted Cruz a solid. The hatchet, as it were, between two, once bitter rivals is buried thousands of feet under the ground. Cruz became a stalwart ally of Trump’s administration. He said it would be the honor of his life to represent Trump in his election contestation before the Supreme Court.
Second, Josh Hawley is on Trump’s radar.
But what was perhaps most interesting is who Trump did not tout: himself, nor a member of his family, nor his longtime lieutenants Mike Pence, the former vice president he has had a falling out with, nor Mike Pompeo, his hawkish, ambitious former secretary of State.
But on Monday for the first time in a while, it sounded more like Trump might not run.
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