Former President Donald Trump, who sped through the 2016 presidential election field attacking his rivals, reposted images of a young Ron DeSantis allegedly partying with high school teenagers, adding his own derisive comment.
“It’s not Ron, is it? He would never do such a thing!’ Trump wrote on his platform Truth Social.
The post was linked to a Truth Social Account, which captured a digital image of a young man with a bowl of haircut who appears to be DeSantis surrounded by three young women.
One of them, with her arm around the current Florida governor, smiles and appears to be holding a brown glass bottle. The hit comes as DeSantis has risen in the polls and lined up influential supporters.
Former President Donald Trump republished a commenter on his Truth Social site that linked to a 2021 blog post that claimed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis allegedly partied with high school seniors when he was a teacher a boarding school in Georgia
To make that clear, Trump also reposted a message from a user named Dong-Chan Lee, who wrote that “Ron DeSantis threw his students a ‘drink’ party when he was a high school teacher. Drinking and cuddling with underage girls certainly looks pretty gross and ephebophilic, a term that refers to attraction to adolescents.
‘No way?’ wrote Trump on Tuesday.
None of the posts contain evidence that the girls pictured were underage, or that anyone photographed was consuming alcohol illegally. could not verify the origin of the photos.
Lee describes himself as a “paleoconservative” and a Trump supporter.
The image blurring the identities of the people surrounding DeSantis appears to be from a 2021 HILLREPORTER.com blog post. The post quotes a “whistleblower” as saying the girls pictured “probably graduated in 2002, which made them seniors at the time.”
Trump has repeatedly credited DeSantis’ victory in Florida in 2018. DeSantis led him in a head-to-head matchup in a poll released Monday. Trump demolished the Club for Growth, which commissioned the poll
Trump posted the picture a second time, adding mockingly, “He would never do anything like that.”
DeSantis, 44, taught history and government at the Darlington School in Rome, Georgia from 2001-2002.
He was fresh out of Yale at the time, and students described him as smart, “smug,” charismatic, and “jock.”
The New York Times referenced the blog post about DeSantis’ time at the school in its own article, without confirming or denying the details of the incident.
“Last year, Hill Reporter, a blog published by a Democratic super-PAC, published a photo of Mr. DeSantis taken in 2002 with several Darlington students, one of whom appeared to be holding a bottle of beer,” the statement read Paper.
Two former students, both women, recalled that he had attended at least two parties where alcohol was served, but they said the parties were after graduation and that they were not bothered by his presence at the time, although they are now question. “It was his first job outside of Yale, he was cute. We didn’t really think much about it,” said one of the former students,” according to the Times.
Trump’s attacks come as DeSantis rose in the 2024 polls for the Republican presidential nomination and days after the Florida governor referenced attacks against him in a news conference.
“I roll out of bed, I have people attacking me from all angles, it’s been happening for many, many years. As an elected leader, you have to make all sorts of decisions. You have to steer the ship,’ he said.
“And the good thing is that the people can make a judgment on that – whether they re-elect you or not,” he said.
“And I’m pleased to say, you know, in my case, not only did we win re-election, we won by the highest percentage of votes of any Republican gubernatorial candidate in Florida state history,” he said — and pointed an achievement, re-election, that Trump himself did not accomplish.
It comes a day after a new Club for Growth poll shows DeSantis leads Trump by nine points in a head-to-head match.
Trump also attacked the conservative group, calling it the “Club for NO Growth” and “a collection of political misfits, globalists and losers” who, in one post, “fighted me non-stop.”
has reached out to the DeSantis campaign for comment.
The “groomer” attack on DeSantis, even without evidence, could have added a sting, as DeSantis’ office referred to opponents of his “don’t say gay” bill as “groomers,” prompting a backlash at the time.