Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis does not have a Truth Social account. But his name has become a fixture in former President Donald Trump’s posts on the platform.
Trump’s latest swipe at the Republican governor, who is rumored to be contemplating a run for president, included sharing a link to a Gateway Pundit article that suggested liberal billionaire philanthropist George Soros is backing DeSantis in 2024. (DeSantis, if he ran, would challenge Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.)
“DeSantis just received the kiss of death,” The Gateway Pundit, a conservative website, read. “George Soros has endorsed DeSantis.” The almost 500-word article repeated a false antisemitic conspiracy theory about Soros helping Nazis in World War II. Soros, who is Jewish, is a survivor of the Holocaust.
The article’s claim of an endorsement stemmed from remarks Soros made about the 2024 presidential election during a Feb. 16 speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. Here’s what Soros said:
“My hope for 2024 is that Trump and Governor DeSantis of Florida will slug it out for the Republican nomination. Trump has turned into a pitiful figure, continually bemoaning his loss in 2020. Big Republican donors are abandoning him in droves. DeSantis is shrewd, ruthless and ambitious. He is likely to be the Republican candidate.”
Soros went on to express his hope that Trump would then run as a third-party candidate, splitting the conservative vote and leading to a “Democratic landslide.”
Laura Silber, a spokesperson for Soros’ Open Society Foundations, a private funder of various justice, human rights and governance groups, said the Gateway Pundit is wrong. She told PolitiFact that Soros “predicted that Gov. DeSantis’ is likely to be the Republican candidate’ for president in 2024 — a prediction, not an endorsement.”
When we asked DeSantis about the claim, his press secretary, Bryan Griffin, said he had not heard about the article and, “given that the governor’s policy positions are diametrically opposed to Mr. Soros’, it makes no sense.”
Griffin also pointed us to public remarks in which DeSantis repeatedly said he opposes Soros and the Democratic politicians the billionaire supports.
In a June 6 tweet, for instance, DeSantis criticized the “Soros-funded radical Left” for infiltrating his state by purchasing two Miami radio stations.
We rate this claim False.
This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.
