Trump met with DeSantis in recent days and is reportedly considering him as a potential nominee to lead the Pentagon should Fox News host Pete Hegseth fail the confirmation process in the Senate. The two leaders were among a group of Florida Republicans in attendance at a memorial service over the weekend honoring three Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office deputies killed in a traffic accident last month.

Still, many in MAGA world remain skeptical of possibly welcoming the second-term governor into a second Trump administration, given the history between the president-elect and “DeSanctimonious.”

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Trump’s endorsement, in the president-elect’s own words, helped DeSantis “[take] off like a rocket ship]” and win Florida’s 2018 gubernatorial election. Trump repeatedly praised DeSantis for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and DeSantis quickly came out in support of Trump in the hours after the F.B.I.’s search of Mar-a-Lago back in 2023 in pursuant of improperly handled classified documents.

Still, the relationship quickly soured after both jumped into the 2024 presidential race.

“The problem with Ron DeSanctimonious is that he needs a personality transplant, and those are not yet available,” Trump said in late 2023 of his then-primary opponent. “Almost all congressmen and women that served with him and knew him well supported me, some of them surprisingly so because of their relationship with Ron.”

Trump routinely mocked DeSantis on the trail until the latter ended his bid in the spring. One ad from Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc super PAC propagated an online rumor that DeSantis routinely ate pudding with his hands.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who has voiced approval for some of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, jokingly repeated another of Trump’s attacks on DeSantis while weighing in on his potential nomination Wednesday.

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“I’ll consider a YES on him if he finally admits to his boots with 4” lifts,” Fetterman wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

DeSantis did eventually endorse Trump and was quick to back the president-elect after the foiled Butler assassination attempt.

Trump also reportedly met with DeSantis in Miami in April, following DeSantis’s primary exit, where the two made amends.

Trump officials say the president-elect maintains confidence in Hegseth’s confirmation chances and that the Florida governor had previously been in consideration for several Cabinet positions.

Multiple Florida Republican operatives downplayed the idea that Trump and DeSantis had any making up to do in the first place.

“President Trump knows that Ron is a warrior, and as soon as DeSantis made clear that he would no longer stand in his way on the road back to the White House — problem solved,” one veteran Republican strategist, with past ties to both camps, told the Washington Examiner. “We need people like Ron in the fight. He would be a great asset to the Trump administration, in any capacity.”

One Florida campaign operative voiced some concern over the chain reaction nominating DeSantis might set off in Tallahassee.

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Should DeSantis leave office early, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez would become governor and immediately be faced with picking not only a new lieutenant but also the seat vacated by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Trump’s secretary of state nominee.

Still, unlike in Trump’s first term, this White House has a new gatekeeper who might be predisposed to keeping DeSantis on the outside.

Susie Wiles, Trump’s incoming chief of staff and co-campaign manager, has her own history with DeSantis.

Wiles, a longtime Florida-based Republican operative herself, helped usher DeSantis onto the national stage but was banished from his inner circle during his first term in Tallahassee on suspicion of leaking to the media. DeSantis’s crusade against Wiles resulted in the loss of her lobbying job with Ballard Partners but didn’t prevent Trump from hiring her for his 2020 and 2024 campaigns.

“What he did to Susie? Well, that was just a low blow,” Mike Hightower, a former health insurance lobbyist from Jacksonville and a longtime ally of Wiles, told USA Today. “He tried to take away her livelihood. Just so mean spirited.”

“She hates him,” a source close to Trump’s transition team added to Politico. “Vance probably sees him as a rival.”

The bad blood between Wiles and DeSantis apparently runs so deep that real estate investor Steve Witkoff, recently appointed by Trump to be special envoy to the Middle East, stepped in to broker Trump and DeSantis’s April meeting to bury the hatchet.