President Trump has made it clear that he is not concerned about the potential of being challenged in a 2024 primary by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. In an interview with Real America’s Voice’s “The Water Cooler” podcast on Monday, Trump expressed his confidence in handling the possible challenge, saying “I hear he might want to run against me, so we’ll handle that the way I handle things.” The former president further stated that his endorsement was what helped propel DeSantis into the lead of the 2018 Republican primary and subsequent victory in becoming governor.

According to Trump, DeSantis’ support was at only 3% when he first tweeted an endorsement for him in December 2017 before he had even officially entered the race and faced a significant deficit against former congressman Adam Putnam. Despite this initial endorsement however, Trump has been seen attacking DeSantis multiple times after the midterms, going as far as to refer to him as “Ron DeSanctimonious”.

Despite these attacks though, DeSantis still managed to pull off a landslide victory over Democrat Charlie Crist in November’s election which gave Republicans a ray of hope amid an otherwise disappointing midterm cycle. Regarding Trump’s recent comments, DeSantis simply said “All of that is just noise” and directed people to look at results from last Tuesday night instead.

Recent polls have indicated that DeSantis leads Trump in a hypothetical primary and also comes out ahead of Joe Biden should they face each other in a general election matchup, although this same poll showed President Trump losing to Biden by 8 points. Thus, despite all the speculation surrounding both individuals’ presidential ambitions for 2024, it remains unclear who will end up making their own respective bids for the White House and who will ultimately prevail should someone succeed in doing so.

In either scenario, having either Trump or DeSantis in the White House would be a good thing.