As the battle royal begins ahead of the 2028 election cycle, Gov. Ron DeSantis finds himself downplaying reports that he’s making another run for the White House.
The Washington Post reports that the outgoing Governor has already contacted a political consultant and that his federal super PAC is actively fundraising.
While DeSantis’ next move has been widely speculated on since he abandoned his 2024 campaign, he’s unambiguously denying any such plans to join what will be a crowded field of presidential hopefuls from both parties, claiming the Post “is fabricating this out of whole cloth.”
“I have not reached out to anybody about running for anything. Just another pathetic attempt to garner clicks. Using anonymous sources of course,” he said on X.
During comments Saturday at the Notre Dame Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, DeSantis went deeper into the topic, saying the Post “run this thing saying I’m out there making all these calls to get people to be part of my team for this, which is false.”
“I have not called a single person. They run on gossip. Sometimes I think they just make some of the stuff up,” DeSantis added. “But what they’ll do is they’ll call somebody who may have worked for me one day or knows who I am… so it’s like they’re guessing is what’s happening. They have no firsthand knowledge of any of this. I mean, we just had an election … I’m still the governor. I’ve got to do all this other stuff before I leave office. I mean, it’s just ridiculous. And they just make this stuff up or they get it from people who are peddling this.”
DeSantis said the “elite media” relies on “anonymous sources” to construct narratives to drive “horserace coverage.”
“They don’t actually put a name next to the accusation. They will say someone familiar with the matter told us this, and again, it doesn’t have to be true. It doesn’t have to be verified. And there’s no way you can really disprove it,” he added.
In the wake of Republicans being routed nationally in the Midterm Elections, DeSantis has been a widely sought guest on talk shows, and 2028 inevitably has been a topic.
During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, he said the “landscape” may be unfavorable for Republicans anytime soon given the electoral obliteration on Tuesday.
“The reality is the Democrats won such a big majority in the House and Senate that a Republican President, if they could even get elected in ’28, would almost assuredly have a Democrat House and Senate on some level. That has a huge impact on your ability to staff an administration, to get judges on courts of appeals, and potentially the U.S. Supreme Court. So the dust is settling,” DeSantis said.
“I haven’t planned anything because I just think that this is a very uncertain time, but last night was — should be — a wake-up call for our party. We really got blasted into oblivion and Florida’s kind of the last one standing because Texas had been our other big anchor, Florida and Texas, certainly for the last 20, 25 years. And now we are really the last one. That’s not enough to win a national election.”
DeSantis made similar points at Notre Dame Saturday, though he believes many Republicans will run because they want the title of the Presidency rather than to “do something.”
Regardless of whether the Post is spinning yarns or DeSantis is planning a run, investors in prediction markets seem to believe he’s a better bet than he was before Tuesday.
On Polymarket, DeSantis is given a 14% chance at the nomination, below only Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. That is more than three times where the Governor was before Election Day.
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Note: A.G. Gancarski has written for the Washington Post in the past on a freelance basis.
