Donald Trump, Longtime Friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Suggests Ron DeSantis Groomed High School Girls

While he would never come out and admit it, Donald Trump is clearly pants-pissingly terrified at the prospect of having to face off with Ron DeSantis for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024. If you want some evidence that the mere idea of competing against the Florida governor sends the ex-president frantically searching for a commode, consider all of the things Trump has done in regard to the guy over the last several months, which have included but not been limited to:

• Insisting DeSantis would have never been elected governor without his endorsement
• Declaring that he “sent in the FBI” to ensure DeSantis beat out his Democratic opponent
• Dubbing DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious”
• Claiming the governor had rewritten history regarding Florida’s early handling of COVID-19
• Threatening to reveal “things about [DeSantis] that won’t be very flattering”
• Suggesting he’d do to DeSantis what he did to Ted Cruz—meaning he might insult the guy’s wife and imply his father killed Kennedy

And while we’d never suggest that Trump is above insinuating that one of his opponents is a pedophile—the ex-president is, after all, not above anything—one might have expected him to at least wait until DeSantis had officially announced his candidacy to do so. But apparently, one would be incorrect.

On Tuesday, the 45th president shared two posts on Truth Social that included the same photo of DeSantis apparently partying with high school girls while he was working at a private school, with the image claiming to show DeSantis “grooming high school girls with alcohol as a teacher.” Adding his own commentary, Trump wrote: “No way?” and “That’s not Ron, is it? He would never do such a thing!”

Obviously, we can’t tell much of anything from this photo. But here’s how The New York Times described DeSantis’s time at the Darlington School, a private K–12 institution in Georgia that he taught at for a year, in between graduating from Yale and attending Harvard Law School:

Several students recalled that Mr. DeSantis was a frequent presence at parties with the seniors who lived in town.

“As an 18-year-old, I remember thinking, What are you doing here, dude?” one former student said. [Gates] Minis, [a 2003 graduate who lives in Colorado], said that when she was a senior, the fall after Mr. DeSantis left, she found a memo on a teacher’s desk reminding the staff that fraternizing with students was inappropriate, even after they graduated.

“‘That’s got to be about Mr. DeSantis!’ That’s what I remember everyone saying,” she said. Other students remembered at least one other teacher who had socialized with students that year.