FORMER US president Donald Trump remains a powerful political force, his former national security adviser Kash Patel has insisted.

He told GB News: “I’ve never seen this man defeated or anything close to that. You know, we still talk often and he is in extremely good spirits.

“I’d like to just put a couple of things in perspective when they say, quote unquote, this red tsunami or wave or whatever verbiage you want to talk about didn’t happen.

“We just retired Nancy Pelosi as speaker of the house. That is a monumental achievement in modern day American politics when they had the landscape in the political atmosphere poised against us.”

He added in an interview with Mark Dolan on GB News: “Most of these…politicos like Paul Ryan, who is a former speaker of the house where he lost the Republican majority, where he lost the presidential candidate and where he lost and suffocated Russiagate investigations that I led, these are the guys that are out there saying that Trump’s over.

“I you think he’s out now, I guess that’s what they want you to think, and he’ll probably just come back.”

“There’s no question that there were sweeping victories in Florida. But the fact remains that in the last presidential cycle, Donald Trump received one million more votes than Ron DeSantis just got this past week.

“That’s a fact that you can’t overcome or ignore. That’s not a fact that people are talking about, but it’s not one that’s out there in the mainstream media. So to say that he has no weight left in places like Florida where it’s diminishing, I think the ground level politics disagree.

“…it was astounding to see Miami, my former home, flip as hard as it did. But those are years upon years in the making.”

The comments followed a move by Trump to lash out at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, as the simmering rivalry between the two top Republicans boiled over.

Mr Trump belittled his former political apprentice as an “average” governor, lacking in “loyalty”.

Mr DeSantis, 44, won re-election in a landslide in Tuesday’s midterms, sealing his status as the Republican party’s brightest rising star.

He is widely expected to run for the party’s 2024 White House nomination.

But Mr Trump, 76, looks increasingly likely to stand in his way.

The former president – who has a massive campaign war chest and remains hugely popular with the party’s base – would be a formidable opponent for Mr DeSantis, or any other Republican who dares challenge him.
In a lengthy statement on Thursday night, Mr Trump dismissed the Florida governor as a political lightweight who had come to him “in desperate shape” when running for his first term in office in 2017.
“Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I would Endorse [sic] him, he could win,” Mr Trump said. “I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart.”

He went on to complain that Mr DeSantis – whom he is nicknaming “Ron DeSanctimonious” – was “playing games” by refusing to rule out a presidential bid.

“Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer,” Mr Trump added.

The former president is widely expected to announce his own plan for a White House comeback as soon as next week.