Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will address delegates at the 2024 Republican National Convention.
DeSantis is scheduled to take the stage in Milwaukee despite previous reports that he and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley were denied speaking slots. Both DeSantis and Haley campaigned to be their party’s 2024 presidential nominee – challenging former President Donald Trump.
“I will confirm a change in schedule that means he will now be speaking,” an unnamed source involved with the convention told NBC News on July 10. DeSantis is also scheduled to participate in a Moms for Liberty panel discussion and attend a breakfast with his state delegation.
CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported on July 9 that DeSantis and Haley would not address the RNC. On the same day, Haley announced she would release the roughly 95 delegates she earned during the primary and would encourage them to support Trump. She endorsed the presumptive nominee in May, several months after ending her bid for the White House.
Haley is still not expected to be given a speaking slot at next week’s convention. A spokesman for the former United Nations ambassador told USA Today she was not invited to attend.
Governor DeSantis's once positive relationship with President Trump became tense during the primary season.
DeSantis, who Trump endorsed during his first gubernatorial campaign in 2017, launched his presidential campaign in May 2023.
“I'm running for president to lead our Great American Comeback," he said in a video on X. "Righting the ship requires restoring sanity to our society, normalcy to our communities and integrity to our institutions. Truth must be our foundation — and common sense can no longer be an uncommon virtue.”
Trump and the governor have exchanged a number of insults. Trump suggested DeSantis get a “personality transplant” and nicknamed him “DeSanctimonious.” DeSantis said Trump’s remarks were “phony” and “juvenile.”
“That is not the way a great nation should be conducting itself, that is not the way the President of the United States should be conducting himself,” he said, per The Hill.
DeSantis suspended his presidential campaign in January after the Iowa Caucus and endorsed Trump.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance. They watched his presidency get stymied by relentless resistance, and they see Democrats using lawfare to this day to attack him," DeSantis wrote in an online statement, per Fox News. "While I have had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of [Dr.] Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear."
The two Republicans met privately in late April. According to The Washington Post, Trump’s advisers hoped the governor would “tap his donor network to help raise significant sums of money for the general election.”
Before his time as governor, DeSantis was a member of the United States House of Representatives.
