Amid growing speculation about a potential 2024 White House run, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis refused to say whether he would serve all four years if reelected as governor during his debate with Democratic challenger Charlie Crist on Monday night, Politico reported.

“You’re running for governor,” Crist said. “And I have a question for you. … Why don’t you look at the eyes of the people of Florida you will serve all four years? Will you serve a full four-year term?”

Instead of directly answering the question, DeSantis replied: “I know that Charlie is itching to talk about 2024 and Joe Biden. But I just want to make things very, very clear: The only worn-out old donkey I’m looking to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist.”

It appears that DeSantis is riding strong momentum ahead of announcing a potential presidential bid.

According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll published on Sunday, the Republican governor is leading former President Donald Trump in a new survey asking GOP voters who they trust to guide the Republican party into the future. In fact, more than 70 percent of registered Republicans believe that DeSantis should have a great or good deal of influence in the future direction of the party, while 64 percent of respondents said the same of Trump.

Meanwhile, the Republican presidential primary could become a heated one, as Trump on Saturday said that he would “probably” have to run for the nation’s highest office again in 2024, according to an Axios report.

“I ran twice. I won twice. I did much better the second time than I did before,” Trump told his supporters at a rally in Robstown, Texas, adding that he was able to garner “millions more votes in 2020 than 2016” and “more votes than any sitting president in the history of our country by far.”

“And now in order to make our country successful, safe, and glorious again, I will probably have to do it again,” he added.

According to the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll released last week, Trump has a two-point lead over Biden in a hypothetical 2024 presidential contest. Forty-five percent of respondents say they support the former president for a second term, compared to 43 percent who plan to back Biden.

On Friday, Biden, who at seventy-nine is the oldest president in U.S. history, told MSNBC in an interview that while he has not made a formal decision about running for the White House in 2024, it is his “intention” to do so.

“The reason I’m not making a judgment about formally running or not running, once I make that judgment, a whole series of regulations kick in and I have to be—I treat myself as a candidate from that moment on,” the president said. “I have not made that formal decision, but it’s my intention—my intention to run again. And we have time to make that decision.”

Ethen Kim Lieser is a Washington state-based Finance and Tech Editor who has held posts at Google, The Korea Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, AsianWeek, and Arirang TV. Follow or contact him on LinkedIn.

Image: Reuters.