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DeSantis DOGE fundraising pitch trips into the middle of Trump-Musk blowup
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' latest DOGE-centered fundraising pitch landed right in the middle of the fierce meltdown of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk's relationship.
The president and Musk have traded sharp barbs over the last day, accelerating their breakup over the One Big Beautiful Bill Act via social media. Amid it all, a DeSantis political committee blasted out a text and email urging supporters to 'help elect real conservatives who will finish the job' of the Department of Government Efficiency efforts, and highlighting how Musk 'stood tall and took the hits.'
The fundraising message raised eyebrows among the MAGA faithful and other Republicans who saw him as taking sides, though DeSantis didn't mention Trump in the donation appeal and had been pressuring Congress to enact the DOGE cuts last week.
By Thursday afternoon, DeSantis' fundraising pitch got amplified over X by conservative activist Laura Loomer, who saw the email as an attack against Trump. She further questioned whether Musk would help to fund a gubernatorial run for Florida first lady Casey DeSantis, who's been considering a bid to replace her term-limited husband in 2026.
'Hard to imagine two people with more checkered national reputations among MAGA base than Musk and DeSantis,' said one longtime GOP operative granted anonymity to speak candidly, upon seeing the fundraising text. 'Both Musk and DeSantis have put themselves on opposite sides of Trump. And both have failed in their last two campaigns: Musk in Wisconsin and DeSantis in last year's GOP primary. If they are trying to form a more traditionally conservative populist coalition, good luck with that.'
But Taryn Fenske, a spokesperson for the governor's political operation, said the fundraising language was approved May 29 — the day before Trump prepared to extol Musk during a friendly send-off at the White House.
A fundraising text and email received by POLITICO went out Wednesday morning, and around the time the email was amplified Thursday, the feud had devolved into Trump threatening to remove government subsidies from Musk's companies and accusations from the world's richest man that Trump was included in the files of Jeffrey Epstein, a reference to the records of the investigation into the late convicted sex offender. (Fenske provided POLITICO with a screenshot proving the political committee's messages had gone out Wednesday, not Thursday when the fight grew especially heated.)
The blasts marked the clearest sign yet that term-limited DeSantis has been planning to get involved in the 2026 primary and general elections. The political committee DeSantis is using, called Restore Our Nation, was retooled after his unsuccessful presidential campaign. DeSantis has in the past proven himself to be a prodigious fundraiser, though his political future is murky with Republican strife in Florida and a bench of plenty of Trump-adjacent candidates in 2028.
The governor has worked to repair his relationship with Trump after challenging him for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. Florida has enacted White House priorities on the state level, from strict immigration policy to purging fluoride from Florida's drinking water.
His relationship with Congress is a different story, however. While he hasn't talked about his position on the GOP megabill that Musk wants to throttle, the governor has complained about Congress' spending for years, even as a former member of the House himself.
'We have a Republican Congress,' DeSantis complained last week in Apopka, Florida, 'and to this day, we're in the end of May — past Memorial Day — and not one cent in DOGE cuts have been implemented by the Congress.'
DeSantis also has long made it clear how influential he believes Musk to be, even launching his 2024 presidential campaign over X Spaces and foregoing the typical in-person rally.
While some members of Congress have faced constituent backlash at town halls over their support for Musk, DeSantis has leaned in and publicized the fact that Florida worked with DOGE to return hundreds of millions of federal dollars in February, though it was mostly for two federal programs the state hadn't requested to be a part of. One of his favorite talking points when traveling the state is that Florida was 'DOGE before DOGE was cool.'
It's not clear that DeSantis will be able to toe the line of both the Musk and Trump relationships, given that the CEO of Tesla is now on the outs with the White House. A text shared with POLITICO between two Republican donors raised concerns that the decision to fundraise off DOGE would "piss off Trump."
DeSantis has bucked Trump's endorsements and positions in the past. The governor hasn't endorsed Trump's choice of GOP Rep. Byron Donalds to be his successor — and instead has criticized his conservative bona fides. DeSantis also selected his own ally, former state Attorney General Ashley Moody, for the U.S. Senate seat vacated after Trump brought in Marco Rubio to lead the State Department.
