Not so long ago, Ron DeSantis was something of a pariah in the MAGA movement. But on night two of the Republican National Convention, the former challenger to Donald Trump made nice—expressing his fealty to him from the rally stage, as Trump sat there looking pleased with himself next to running mate J.D. Vance, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
DeSantis was met with ecstatic applause, as he called to end what he criticized as Joe Biden’s “Weekend at Bernie’s presidency.” “Biden is just a figurehead,” he said. “He’s a tool for imposing a leftist agenda on the American people.”
“The left is in retreat,” DeSantis added, the crowd rising to its feet. “Let’s make the 45th president of the United States the 47th president of the United States!”
DeSantis had been positioning himself as the heir to Trump’s throne when he launched his presidential bid last May. But if he was a rising star as the governor of the former president’s home state—and a fierce advocate advancing the MAGA agenda in Florida—his crusade to take up Trump’s torch made him something of a foe. The former president called him “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” and relentlessly attacked him and his character. The governor mostly seemed too scared to hit back—and when he finally did, it wasn’t enough to resuscitate his campaign. He dropped out of the race in January, soon after the Iowa caucus.
DeSantis’s speech Tuesday night was preceded by that of another MAGA exile, Nikki Haley, who received a more mixed response when she took the stage, with some boos mixed in among the applause. But she seemed to win the audience over quickly when she threw her support behind Trump: “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement,” she said. “Period.”
Haley, a former Trump administration official, lasted a bit longer than DeSantis in the primary, although she finished behind DeSantis in the first contest of the season. She offered herself up to the relatively moderate members of the GOP as a more reasonable alternative to her old boss. Was she really that moderate? Not really. But she was at least willing to go after the standard-bearer, who mostly blew off the pageantry of the primary process, in ways that other challengers like Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott—now some of the marquee names at this year’s RNC—were not. “He is unhinged,” Haley said of Trump at one point. She only scored primary wins in Washington, D.C. and Vermont, but earned enough votes to suggest some weaknesses in Trump’s candidacy. Like DeSantis, Haley consistently found herself in the crosshairs of Trump, who attacked her birth name with a racist jab and mocked her husband, who was deployed overseas at the time. “The most harm he’s ever come across is whether a golf ball hits him on a golf cart,” she said of Trump, in response. “I don’t care what party you’re in, that’s not okay.”
And yet, also like DeSantis, Haley eventually kissed the ring: She suspended her longshot candidacy in March, announced in May that she would vote for the man who she had previously said would create “four years of chaos” if elected, and last week urged her delegates to vote for Trump at the RNC.
“I’m here tonight because we have a country to save, and a unified Republican party is essential to saving her,” Haley said, praising Trump and, it seemed, getting herself back into the good graces of his party.
DeSantis, for his part, didn’t seem to need to work as hard to get back into the fold. That much seemed clear by the warm welcome he got across town earlier in the day, at a town hall event hosted by Moms for Liberty, the far-right organization wreaking havoc in libraries and classrooms and on school boards. There at the Bradley Symphony Center, he was a righteous crusader, a model for other conservative governors—like Sanders, who appeared with him in the Moms for Liberty panel—to follow. “They stand up for common sense values,” Kerry French, an attendee from Washington state and a member of the RNC rules committee, told me of DeSantis and Sanders. “I love these people,” she added, before making it clear to me she didn’t feel quite the same about the media.
For two hours, Moms for Liberty co-founders Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice rallied the supporters they describe as “joyful warriors” in a “battle between good and evil,” while setting up various bogeymen for panelists like Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and Florida Representative Byron Donalds to knock down—from “transgender ideology” to the Department of Education, which Wyoming Representative Harriet Hageman said she is working to “abolish.” (Ramaswamy, who has seemed to be everywhere at the convention, also called for the DOE to be eliminated during brief closing remarks.)
“We have to take power out of Washington, D.C.,” Hageman said, eliciting loud applause from the crowd.
But DeSantis and Sanders, who served as Trump’s press secretary, were the big draws, receiving a standing ovation as they came onstage. Sanders wore a pink suit. DeSantis wore the worst jeans you’ve ever seen, a blue suit jacket, and that awkward little smile of his that earned him so much mockery during his doomed run for president. “We’re doin’ it right,” he told Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts of his crusades against all things “woke.” “We’re happy,” he said, “to do it.”
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance, and the Dangerous Dance of the New Right
Ivanka Trump, Sensing Power, Slinks Back to the National Stage
An Epic First Look at Gladiator II
Looking for Love in the Hamptons? Buy a Ticket for the Luxury Bus.
The Dark Origins of the True-Crime Frenzy at CrimeCon
Palace Insiders on the Monarchy’s Difficult Year
The Best TV Shows of 2024, So Far
Listen Now: VF’s Still Watching Podcast Dissects House of the Dragon
The post At the Republican National Convention, Ron DeSantis Gets a Warm Welcome Back Into the MAGA Fold appeared first on Vanity Fair.