DeSantis victorious in Florida as Trump hits him with ominous 2024 threat – live

Here’s my colleague Alex Woodward with the full story on Ron DeSantis and his ascendancy in Florida.

Mr DeSantis is estimated to have cruised to victory over Demorat Charlie Crist, securing a second term and bolstering his influence and popularity among the Republican base.

The win can only increase speculation that he could challenge Mr Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination, given his success in making himself a national figurehead for America’s culture wars over race and gender in schools.

Mr Trump had ominously claimed that Mr DeSantis “could hurt himself very badly” if he runs, while Mr Trump’s attorney Alina Habba said: “Just stay where you are. You are doing a great job in Florida.”

Mr DeSantis now has another four years in office, but of course that would not stop him from stepping down if he thinks he has a shot at the White House.

So far, Mr Trump has not congratulated Mr DeSantis on his victory.

Christina Bobb, a former OAN host who serves as one of Donald Trump’s attorneys in the Mar-a-Lago affair, appeared on the Trump-backing Right Side Broadcasting Network on Monday night as her boss prepared for his Ohio rally – and added to the chorus of right-wing voices already spinning a narrative of Democratic electoral malfeasance if the results of the midterms do not fall in Republicans’ favour by the early hours of Wednesday.

This projection for an acceptable rate of vote-counting is entirely arbitrary, and rests on a template conspiracy theory that Democrats will somehow tamper with the vote tallies after all voting is completed – in turn providing a premise to question the validity of all mail-in ballots, which tend to be added to tallies later in the counting process, tend to favour Democrats, and in some states can be added to the total count well after in-person voting closes.

At this critical moment for American democracy, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka is focusing on the most important issues.

“Save BIG on MY PILLOW Products RIGHT NOW!” tweeted the Hungarian-American radio host on Tuesday night, offering followers a personal discount code for MyPillow.com.

The pillow and bedding supplier has become a darling of MAGA conservatives due to its boss Mike Lindell’s outspoken support for Mr Trump’s conspiracy theories about the 2020 election being stolen.

Trump told a midterms rally crowd that former First Lady Melania Trump didn’t believe the salacious allegations in the Steele dossier, the infamous and now mostly-debunked research file from former British spy Christopher Steele about the Trump campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia.

The research, funded by the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee, claimed among other things that Mr Trump paid prostitutes in Moscow to urinate on a hotel bed Barack and Michelle Obama had once used.

Mr Trump, famously germaphobic, said his wife didn’t believe the allegations.

“She said to me, ‘I know that’s not your thing,’” Mr Trump said. “You know why? Because I’m a germ freak.”

The Independent’s Josh Marcus has more:

Former president Donald Trump continued his needling of his likely 2024 rival Ron DeSantis, telling Fox News that a run might hurt the Florida governor.

Mr Trump spoke with Fox on his airplane for an exclusive interview and said that he had no “tiff” with Mr DeSantis but said it would be a “mistake” to run.

“I don’t know if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly,” Mr Trump said. “I think he would be making a mistake, I think the base would not like it — I don’t think it would be good for the party.”

Donald Trump says on Newsmax that he likely won’t back Mitch McConnell for GOP Senate leader but “absolutely” will support Kevin McCarthy in the House.

The eyes of the world were on Ohio last night after the Trump camp began briefing the media that he might be about to formally announce his candidacy for the 2024 election, and members of his family travelled to be by his side for the final pre-election rally of the midterms season.

In the event, however, Trump spoke for more than 90 minutes without confirming his third tilt at the presidency, stating only that a further “big announcement” on the matter would be made from Mar-a-Lago on 15 November.

So what happened? Well, according to several reports including from the Washington Post, the rumours that Trump was about to announce sparked a frenzy of calls from senior Republican party figures, all urging the former president to wait until after today’s election.

Party leaders feared an announcement would serve only to boost Democrat turnout, jeopardising GOP chances in several knife-edge midterm races.

This is not the line they reportedly used to convince Trump to hold off, however. Instead they appealed to his ego, suggesting that if he declared his candidacy on Monday night it would get buried in the election news cycle, and that waiting another week would get him the attention he craves.