And the prickly nature of DeSantis’ personality, which could manifest itself in an awkward mix of detachment, moodiness and facial tics, amounted to an irresistible target for Trump, who seemed to relish bullying DeSantis as if he were stuffing a freshman into a high school locker.

Still, DeSantis remains popular in his home state, and beyond Florida he’s viewed relatively favourably. As a presidential candidate, he needed to succeed where every Republican before him had failed: prying loyal Trump supporters away from the former president without alienating them.

Trump has long trampled over the boundaries of generally accepted political behaviour, relentlessly pushing the racist “birther” lie about former president Barack Obama and urging supporters to lock up Hillary Clinton. But his campaign hit new levels of cruelty against a fellow Republican.

The missives were often led by Trump’s chief spokesperson Steven Cheung, who leaned into his background as a public relations operative for the Ultimate Fighting Championship to deliver brutal slams with the force of the sport’s suffocating guillotine chokehold.

In November, Cheung told The Wall Street Journal that in Iowa, DeSantis would face “unimaginable pain that he’s never felt before in his life”.

Loading

In a news release, he cast doubt on DeSantis’ masculinity, saying that he walked like “a 10-year-old girl who had just raided her mum’s closet and discovered heels for the first time”.

Cheung also referred to the Florida governor as a “desperate eunuch”, questioned why DeSantis would “cuck himself” in front of the entire country – sexual slang that implies weakness in a man – and accused him of searching for “new sugar daddies” to fund his campaign. He called DeSantis a “disloyal dog”.

DeSantis fought back with a more traditional approach.

His campaign rolled out a “Trump Accident Tracker” in a daily email to the news media that highlighted Trump’s missteps on the trail. He criticised Trump’s “juvenile insults”, saying voters did not like them. (The eruption of laughter at Trump rallies suggested otherwise.)

DeSantis eventually tried to up his game.

Responding to accusations that he wore lifts in his cowboy boots to appear taller, DeSantis questioned Trump’s manhood.

“If Donald Trump can summon the balls to show up to the debate, I’ll wear a boot on my head,” DeSantis said.

The line did not seem to land. DeSantis himself has admitted that, unlike Trump, he is “not an entertainer”.

At the same time, pro-Trump online influencers formed a troll army pumping out content including videos showing a man with DeSantis’ face being kicked in the groin. In comparison, DeSantis’ online operation proved haplessly inept.

The differing approaches stemmed, in part, from a fixation on DeSantis at Trump headquarters, where animosity for the governor ran high.

Loading

Not only was Trump incensed by what he viewed as a striking lack of loyalty from DeSantis, but the Trump campaign also includes former DeSantis campaign aides who had been fired or felt otherwise mistreated by the Florida governor, including Susie Wiles, one of the former president’s closest confidants. Many still had axes to grind.

“Bye, bye,” Wiles posted on Sunday on social media about her erstwhile boss, who had tried to blackball her from Republican politics.

The quick endorsement from DeSantis on Sunday may help salve some of those wounds. Hours later, Trump vowed that he would retire the “DeSanctimonious” nickname, and his allies began posting messages welcoming DeSantis back into the Trump fold.

But aides said that Trump and DeSantis had still not talked.

Asked about whether the two men could repair their relationship, Cheung held his fire.

“We’re focused on New Hampshire,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.