Edited by: TJVNews.com

As speculation continues to grow as to whether Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will throw his hat in the ring for the 2024 presidential race, the New York Post has reported that the popular governor of the Sunshine State has planned a visit to New York City on Monday for a pro-law enforcement rally at a catering hall in Staten Island.

This planned visit which coincides with Presidents Day is considered an  “incursion” into an area of New York City that has been a loyal stronghold of former President Trump, the Post reported.

The 7:30 a.m. President’s Day speech at Privé will be the governor’s first stop on a multi-city tour to showcase his pro-law enforcement  bona fides, insiders said, as was reported by the Post.

“On Staten Island, we are proud to support our law enforcement,” said Assemblyman Mike Tannousis, the Staten Island GOP chairman, according to the Post report. “I’m happy that our law enforcement community will get some recognition and support.”

Of the five boroughs that comprise New York City, Staten Island has always been a bastion of support for GOP candidates and is considered a strongly red-leaning borough. The Post reported that Trump supporters on Staten Island gave the former president 57% of the island’s vote in 2020. This makes  Monday’s visit a crucial test of DeSantis’s chances among the former president’s remaining devotees, the Post reported.

For his part, Trump continued his verbal assaults on DeSantis early Saturday and offered a scathing critique of how the Florida governor responded to the Covid pandemic, the Post reported. The report also said that Trump denied that he ever called DeSantis by the derisive nickname “Meatball Ron.”

“I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will,” Trump said on his social media platform Truth Social, the Post reported. He added that “it would be totally inappropriate to use the word “meatball” as a moniker for Ron!”  It was the second time this week Trump knocked back a report that he had used the moniker, which some said was an anti-Italian slur, the Post report said.

Trump has used the term in casual conversations while also labeling the Florida governor “Shutdown Ron,” a reference to restrictions the governor put in place at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the New York Times reported.