Trump rips Ron DeSantis for calling Putin 'attendant of gas station with bunch of nukes'

Former US President Donald Trump lambasted his fellow Republican leader Ron DeSantis, who called the Russian President an “authoritarian gas station attendant”. The Republican leader and the Florida governor are considered as one the leading contenders to bag the Republican nomination in the 2024 US Presidential Election. During a Piers Morgan interview on Fox Nation, the Florida governor and nemesis of Trump called the Russian President a “war criminal” and stated that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was wrong. Trump defended the Russian President in a campaign video released on Thursday. 

“Calling Russia a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons or calling Putin ‘authoritarian gas station attendant’... is exactly the kind of simple-minded thinking that has produced decades of failed diplomacy and ultimately war,” the former US President asserted in a campaign video. “Those such as Mitt Romney and Ron De Santis, very much alike, who insist on arrogantly treating Russia as deeply inferior to the other nations of the world are not only ignorant and foolish, but their attitude makes it impossible to negotiate peace,” the business mogul-turned-politician added. While Trump has been sceptical of De Santis since he joined the presidential race, Republican Senator Mitt Romney is known for taking anti-Trump stances. The twice-impeached former US President is known for defending the Russian president in the past. When Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, Trump described the invasion as “savvy” and “genius”. 

The gas station comment and De Santis’s change in stance

During his interview with Fox, the Florida governor called the Russian President a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons”. “I think (Putin’s) hostile to the United States, but I think the thing that we’ve seen is he doesn’t have the conventional capability to realize his ambitions,” DeSantis told Fox News. “And so, he’s basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons and one of the things we could be doing better is utilizing our own energy resources in the U.S,” he added. 

However, the Republican firebrand quickly backtracked on the comments he made. Earlier this month, the conservative Florida governor called the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war a “territorial dispute”. The assertion to the British journalist Piers Morgan came after the Florida governor face a mountain of criticisms from his own party. 

Not a novel attack

The Republican leader’s lethal attack against the Russian president is not a novel insult. In 2014, Late Republican Senator John McCain described the whole country of Russia as a “gas station masquerading as a country”. “I have no illusions or worry about the long-term future of Russia. Russia is now a gas station masquerading as a country,” McCain said. “Vladimir Putin’s forces are on the border of Eastern Ukraine right now, and they are poised to invade. They even have forces in Belarus and Vladimir Putin is figuring out the cost-benefit ratio to moving into Ukraine,” the Republican leader and a US war hero added. McCain who ran against Barack Obama in 2008 made these remarks when the Russian forces attempted to invade Ukraine in 2014 which eventually led to the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.