Ron DeSantis swears he hasn’t reached out to anybody about running for anything, and he torched one newspaper for suggesting otherwise.

Democrats are already licking their chops over a Republican civil war in 2028.

And Ron DeSantis’ right-hand man has quietly been building something that tells a different story.

The Governor’s Next Address Comes With a Donor List

NBC News reporter Matt Dixon reported that the term-limited Florida Governor is laying the groundwork for a conservative think tank to launch after he hands over the Governor’s Mansion in January.

According to Dixon, DeSantis and his Chief of Staff, Jason Weida, have worked on the idea behind the scenes for several months. The group would let DeSantis court future donors, keep a staff on the payroll, and hold onto a national megaphone in the fight over where the Republican Party goes next.

Dixon didn’t bother dressing it up on X. He wrote that the move “allows him to continue seeking donor money, have staff, and a platform ahead of 2028.” He left 2032 on the table too.

Then came the kicker. Dixon reported that outreach has already begun to figure out who might help bankroll the operation.

Think tanks usually brag about their big ideas first. This one’s first reported milestone is a call sheet.

Dixon added one more detail that deserves a second look. He wrote that sagging approval numbers for Trump and the MAGA movement “helped him see a path.”

That’s a strange thing to build a business plan around. The governor’s opening, by his own team’s apparent reckoning, runs straight through the base’s rough patch.

The Denial Didn’t Survive One News Cycle

After Republicans took a beating in the midterms, the Washington Post reported, citing three sources, that DeSantis planned a 2028 run and had contacted at least one national political consultant. The Post also reported that his federal super PAC sent out a fundraising text.

DeSantis came out swinging. “The Washington Post is fabricating this out of whole cloth,” he wrote on X. “I have not reached out to anybody about running for anything.”

Maybe that’s technically true. A think tank doesn’t come with yard signs or a filing deadline.

But it does nearly everything a campaign in waiting needs. It keeps donors warm. It keeps loyal staffers from wandering off to other camps. And it keeps the boss booked on cable news while everybody else in the party is still licking wounds.

Another GOP consultant told reporters DeSantis was “keeping options open for 2028” but was more likely looking at 2032. That same consultant said the think tank would help rebuild and shape the Republican Party and float policy ideas.

Axios caught the mood among the consultant class. “The alligator people are stirring,” one national Republican strategist told the outlet, a nod to Florida’s state reptile. The Wall Street Journal reported that some GOP donors said they would back DeSantis.

Weida, for what it’s worth, is no stranger to Trump world. President Trump named him as his pick for inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services back in 2020. Now Weida is drawing up blueprints for the man who ran against Trump in the 2024 primary.

Big Checks Already Rewrote One DeSantis Position

The money question matters because it has already moved DeSantis once.

In early 2023, he answered a questionnaire from Tucker Carlson and called the war in Ukraine a “territorial dispute” that didn’t rise to the level of a vital American interest. Plenty of America First voters cheered.

But the cheering didn’t last. The American Conservative noted that DeSantis walked those comments back after donors pushed back, and he soon told Piers Morgan that Vladimir Putin was a war criminal.

That retreat came from a candidate with his own campaign war chest. A think tank living off donor checks faces the same pressure every single quarter, with no primary voters around to push back.

Right now DeSantis is saying the right things about the war neoconservatives sold to the administration. “The Republican mantra since Trump came on the scene was, we don’t want to get in these open-ended conflicts, and that’s what this has become,” he said on CNN.

He also took aim at Republicans who blamed high gas prices on Joe Biden. “When you gaslight people, they don’t trust you on anything else,” DeSantis said.

He’s right on both counts. And maybe this time the conviction sticks, since nobody forgets a midterm like that one in a hurry. But the last time the checkbooks started talking, DeSantis listened.

Mike Pence Already Test-Drove This Exact Vehicle

Washington has seen the think tank waiting room before.

Mike Pence founded Advancing American Freedom after he left the vice presidency and pitched it as an alternative to the Heritage Foundation. Then he ran for President.

It didn’t go well. Pence ended September 2023 with $1.18 million in the bank and $621,000 in debt, according to the Associated Press, and he quit the race on October 28, 2023, more than two months before the Iowa caucuses.

His group kept right on pushing more American money for Ukraine and cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Those were the donor class favorites, and the base wanted no part of them.

Here’s the twist. DeSantis spoke at the same Las Vegas event right after Pence bowed out, and he later praised his former rival on social media as a “principled man of faith who has worked tirelessly to advance the conservative cause.”

A think tank can keep a staff paid and a donor list humming. It can’t conjure voters out of thin air. And the America First movement already has an heir apparent in Vice President JD Vance, who warned against the open-ended war long before the midterm returns made the case for him.

That’s exactly why the establishment wing keeps shopping for alternatives. Donors who miss the old party of amnesty, offshoring, and endless foreign adventures don’t need a candidate who agrees with them on day one. They need somebody on retainer.

Democrats Already Picked Their Favorite Republican Fight

Nothing would thrill Democrats more than a Republican Party tied up in a donor-funded shadow primary for the next two years.

Their incoming majorities plan to spend that time on subpoenas, amnesty schemes dressed up as compassion, and a socialist wish list that grew longer with every seat they flipped. A distracted Right makes all of it easier.

DeSantis himself sounded gloomy about the road ahead. On The Sage Steele Show, he warned that a Republican President would struggle to pass a “conservative reform agenda” with Democrats running Congress, and he suggested Republicans might not win back a congressional majority until 2032.

That happens to be the same backup year Dixon flagged for the think tank.

Expect white papers, speeches, and a steady stream of television hits in the months ahead. Expect a lot of talk about rebuilding the party, too.

Ron DeSantis told the country he hasn’t reached out to anybody about running for anything. The reporter who broke the think tank story says the calls to potential donors have already gone out.

Sources: NBC News (Matt Dixon), “Ron DeSantis is preparing to start a think tank amid renewed presidential buzz”; Matt Dixon on X; Political Wire; Florida Politics, Sunburn; Yahoo News/Washington Post report on DeSantis 2028 planning; Yahoo News, “DeSantis’ post-midterm media blitz renews 2028 chatter”; Axios, “Republicans eye Florida’s ‘alligator people’ for 2028”; The American Conservative, “DeSantis’s Unconvincing Iran Flip-Flop”; Associated Press via Fortune and PBS NewsHour, Mike Pence campaign exit coverage; CNN, Trump HHS inspector general nominee report