On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump re-posted a photo of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in which he was accused of consuming alcohol with kids while working as a high school teacher.
"That's not Ron, is it? He would never do such a thing!" Trump wrote sarcastically on his social media app, Truth Social.
The image shows DeSantis, 23, smiling amid three ladies with blocked-out faces whose ages are unknown. Although one of the women in the images is holding a brown glass bottle, DeSantis is not seen drinking. Nonetheless, the description says, "Here's Ron DeSantimonious grooming high school students with booze as a teacher," followed by a puke emoji.
The initial tweet Trump reshared came from a user called Dong-Chan Lee, who is described as a "paleoconservative" and Trump admirer on Truth Social.
The snapshot was taken by Hill Reporter, a Democratic super PAC site. According to the New York Times, the portrait was shot following DeSantis's 2001-2002 academic year as a teacher at the renowned Darlington School before attending Harvard Law School.
Darlington is a boarding school near Rome, Georgia, where DeSantis taught history and government as well as coached baseball and sports.
According to the New York Times, which cited unidentified sources, several kids stated DeSantis attended parties with the seniors. Two classmates stated they saw DeSantis at two parties where alcohol was given, though they maintained it was after graduation. They stated they weren't troubled by it at the time, but they now doubt it, according to the article.
"It was his first job out of Yale, he was cute. We didn't really think too much about it," one of the former students said.
Trump dubbed DeSantis as "DeSanctimonious" before of the gubernatorial race, saying it was "disloyal" for the governor to keep open the possibility of running for president given that Trump's 2018 gubernatorial endorsement helped him earn the GOP primary.
The "grooming" charge was supposed to be a hypocritical assault on DeSantis, whose staff has accused opponents of his disputed sex education law, dubbed "Don't Say Gay," of "grooming." Grooming often refers to pedophiles attempting to acquire the trust of their teenage victims in order for them to accept sexual abuse without informing an adult.
Trump going heavy on the "DeSantis is a pedophile" stuff today. pic.twitter.com/LS2zRpke3z
— Will Sommer (@willsommer) February 7, 2023
Trump has been accused of sexual misbehavior by at least 26 different women, despite the fact that he does not consume alcohol. He has rejected all of the charges.
During the 2016 presidential race, Trump publicly mocked his opponents with nasty nicknames. He is presently seeking the Republican nomination in 2024. No one else has officially entered the race, although DeSantis is constantly behind Trump in surveys.
On Monday, the Club for Growth, a conservative think tank with a PAC and super PAC arm, released a survey indicating DeSantis may perform even better. It discovered the governor had a nine-point edge over Trump in a potential 2024 contest.
But it's unclear why Trump opted to attack DeSantis on Tuesday afternoon, and his team did not immediately answer Insider's request.
Earlier in the day, DeSantis spoke at a defamation law event, where he applauded a conservative lawyer who defended Dominion Voting Machines in its defamation case against Trump supporter Mike Lindell. The CEO of MyPillow lashed out at DeSantis on Twitter, but Trump did not mention the discussion.
Instead, Trump re-posted the photo of DeSantis and attacked the governor on other issues. They posted a screenshot of a Tampa Bay Times piece in which DeSantis stated that he was "happy" that violent Trump demonstrators were jailed during the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
via patriottruthnews