Donald Trump supporters eye new hero, and breathe sigh of relief

Support for the ex-president is falling in states exhausted by his antics, while polished Ron DeSantis is mopping up the Maga vote.

Donald Trump announced he was running again for the presidency last week. Picture: Rebecca Blackwell/AP/The Times

Petrol cost $US3.69 ($5.50) a gallon last week at the Exxon filling station in Monterey, a small town in western Virginia, and Ryan Skelton, a farmer, was seething about it.

“How did that happen?” he asked, after spending more than $US150 filling up his Ford pickup truck.

“In two years this country has gone to shit. Look at the price of the f***ing gas, man. The sooner we get that old man out of the White House, the better.”

Skelton was talking about President Biden, but asked if he wanted the return of another old man, Donald Trump, he was unsure.

Ron DeSantis, left, the Florida governor, is Trump’s biggest rival for the affection of Republican voters. Picture: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP/The Times

“Look, I love president Trump,” Skelton said. “He was great for our country and the economy was so much better than it is now, but perhaps it is time for a change. I don’t know – if there was an election tomorrow (Monday), I’d vote Trump, but we’ve got two years to work it out. As long as America is still here in two years.”

If Trump, 76, cannot guarantee Skelton’s vote in a place like Monterey, he is in real trouble.

Last Tuesday, Trump stood in front of a bank of stars-and-stripes flags in the ballroom of Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home and private members’ club, and announced that he was running for president in 2024. So far he is the only candidate to have officially declared, but the poor results of his favoured candidates in the midterm elections the previous week have encouraged potential rivals to believe that his hold on Republican voters is slipping.

Monterey, which sits along the snow-dusted ridge of Shenandoah Mountain, is the seat of Highland County, one of the most staunchly Republican areas in the whole country.

The county hasn’t backed a Democrat for president since 1932. Two years ago, more than 70 per cent of residents voted for Trump, and there are still signs supporting his 2020 presidential run in people’s windows. On the outskirts of town a Confederate flag flutters in a field.

So whoever the Republicans choose for 2024, Highland County is voting for them. The question is whether Trump will make it that far.

“I’m a Republican, and I will always vote Republican,” said Betty Wagner, who was out for a bracing walk.

“I’ve never really liked Trump that much. Everything is always chaos around him. The recent results show that not everyone in the Republicans like him either. I hope we get someone else to choose next time.”

She was not convinced, however, by the other most strongly touted contender: Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who cruised to re-election by almost 20 per cent in a state that Trump won by just over 3 per cent in 2020.

DeSantis won re-election in Florida by a big margin on a night of disappointment elsewhere for the Republicans. Picture: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg/Getty Images/The Times

At 44, DeSantis is at least a generation younger than Trump and has turned Florida from a swing state into reliable Republican territory.

“He’s OK, but let’s see who else comes forward,” says Wagner. “I wouldn’t say it too loudly around here. As long as it is not Trump again, I don’t really mind.”

DeSantis is not expected to join the race until May. Other potential contenders, such as Mike Pence, the former vice-president, are also expected to wait before throwing their hats into the ring.

Trump faces legal challenges too. His conduct is being investigated by various bodies and on Friday, Merrick Garland, the attorney-general, appointed a special counsel to look at the former president’s behaviour during last year’s January 6 riots and the keeping of confidential government documents at his Florida home.

Jack Smith, a former war crimes prosecutor, will set out his reasons for recommending any charges against Trump if he finds sufficient evidence of wrongdoing. Were that to happen, the calls for an alternative to Trump in 2024 are likely to grow louder in moderate Republican circles.

Until the midterms, Trump liked to boast that most polls gave him a lead over DeSantis of 20 points or so. All that has now changed. But a YouGov survey of Republicans for The Economist this week has DeSantis seven points clear of the former president. A poll in Iowa, one of the earliest states to pick a nominee and therefore crucial to a campaign’s momentum, put DeSantis 11 points clear of Trump. A similar poll in August had the Florida governor behind by 15 points.

Trump had already taken to calling his rival “Ron DeSanctimonious”, but the tone has now changed. In his speech on Tuesday, Trump did not mention DeSantis at all.

The party is choosing sides anyway. A number of Republican big hitters, such as the former vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, and Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland, have already launched bitter attacks on Trump. Much of the conservative media, including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, both part of News Corp, the ultimate owner of The Sunday Times, has become more hostile to him.

Sam Nunberg, a Trump adviser during his 2016 campaign, said “the majority of the country despises Trump … and the majority of the Republican Party is moving on”.

For the first time since Trump finished second to Ted Cruz in Iowa at the start of the 2016 Republican primary contest, the business tycoon turned politician is an underdog in his own party.

DeSantis, an Iraq war veteran who attended Yale and Harvard Law School, is widely seen as a more polished operator with potentially broader appeal than the embittered Trump of 2022. In The Washington Post, the conservative writer Jim Geraghty argued that he has “the policy goals of a traditional conservative Republican, not the cobbled-together agenda that typified the Trump years”.

But it is far too early to write off the former president, who has a history of confounding expectations and a proven appetite for brutal primary campaigning.

DeSantis is untested on foreign policy and has not been subjected to anything like the level of nationwide scrutiny that Trump has lived with for years.

Among Trump’s loyal voters, many of whom wrongly believe he was cheated out of a second term in the White House, he retains strong support.

“I was very relieved when Trump announced he was running again; God, we need him back,” said Brandon Campbell, a Monterey resident.

“I was surprised by the midterms, but then again, the bigger issue is the reliability of our voting system. DeSantis seems like a good guy, but he’s not Trump, and that’s who we need right now.”

The Sunday Times