The question is being asked on a regular basis, now. What about a Trump-DeSantis “dream team” ticket in 2024? Is it a possibility? Would Donald Trump make the offer, knowing how popular Ron DeSantis is?

Perhaps more importantly, would DeSantis accept it?

Various reports suggest that the popular Florida governor doesn’t want Trump’s 2022 re-endorsement in the gubernatorial election, nor does he want Trump to campaign for him. But while Trump has begun to dance around the 2024 question, DeSantis appears to want zero to do with answering it.

Also, during an interview with Newsmax TV on Thursday, Trump said he’s not ruling out DeSantis as a possible running mate. That is if Donald actually [winking emoji] runs. Trump told Newsmax he has a good relationship with DeSantis — right before going full-metal Trumpian, and attempting to take credit for DeSantis’s success and popularity in the Sunshine State, as transcribed by The Epoch Times:

Well, I get along with him. I was very responsible for his success because I endorsed him and he went up like a rocket ship.

Trump was referring to his 2018 endorsement of DeSantis in his gubernatorial run against Democrat Andrew Gillum. Speaking of Gillum, as my colleague Nick Arama reported on June 22, he was charged in a 21-count federal indictment with conspiracy, wire fraud, and making false statements to FBI agents.

Anyway, here’s Trump on DeSantis again, via Newsmax:

I was very responsible for him getting elected, as you know, but I have a very good relationship with him.

Either way, DeSantis remains a popular choice to dethrone Trump in 2024; if Trump is to be dethroned.

TRUMP ON DESANTIS: "I was very responsible for him getting elected, as you know, but I have a very good relationship with him." pic.twitter.com/IiOyufNp9R

— Newsmax (@newsmax) June 21, 2022

As I reported earlier in June, Trump played nice with the possibility of a DeSantis challenge for the 2024 nomination during an interview with The New Yorker. Trump told the magazine he wasn’t really worried about DeSantis in 2024, one way or the other. Why? As transcribed by The New Yorker:

I don’t know if Ron is running, and I don’t ask him. It’s his prerogative. I think I would win.

DeSantis’s “prerogative” aside, as I noted in the article, behind-the-scenes machinations would suggest that both camps are already plotting — or at the minimum, considering — strategies against the other.

Translation: popcorn. We’re going to need a lot of popcorn.

Longtime Republican campaign strategist Brooke Rollins told The Epoch Times on June 14, several weeks before a Ready for Ron PAC was created in support of a DeSantis run, that “The information I’ve gotten the last several weeks is Trump is definitely running,” which should come as zero surprise to zero people.

“We’re not working at all against Trump,” Rollins said, adding:

At that point in time, I didn’t know if he [Trump] was running or not. What I’ve said since has made it clear is that he [DeSantis] won’t run against Trump.

One wonders if Rollins — as well as Team Trump — is still so sure about that.

As RedState reported in late June, a New Hampshire poll conducted June 16-20 by the University of New Hampshire showed DeSantis leading Trump for the nomination, and beating Joe Biden in a general election matchup. Trump was shown losing by seven points to Biden in the same poll.

The bottom line:

Regardless of how 2024 plays out, as I suggested, above, we’re going to need a hell of a lot of popcorn. Trump would not go down easily — let alone “accept” other (“disloyal”) Republicans entering the race, and would likely resort to the same types of ad hominem attacks he hurled at “Little Marco,” “Lying Ted,” “Low-Energy Jeb,” and nearly every other candidate in the Republican primary race.

And if DeSantis does decide to challenge Trump, he will be formidable as hell, and he will give it all he has to give — just as we have seen him do time and time again against Florida Democrats, the Biden Administration, public education, and of course, his steely-eyed shellacking of Disney. And, like Trump, the Florida governor refuses to take crap from anyone who gets in his way. I’ll tell you this:

2024 is going to make 2016 and 2020 look like Sunday school picnics.

Hopefully, sans the Jan. 6 silliness, of course.