Trump huddling with Republican governors at Mar-a-Lago dinner

President-elect Trump is hosting a group of Republican governors for dinner at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, Thursday evening.

The gathering comes a week and a half before the former and future president is inaugurated Jan. 20 and takes over the White House.

The meeting gives Trump a chance to speak with the GOP governors who will likely play an integral role in carrying out the Trump agenda in his second administration, including his push for mass deportation of immigrants with criminal records.

Among those attending the dinner are governors Ron DeSantis of Florida, Brian Kemp of Georiga, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Fox News confirmed.

DeSantis, a one-time Trump ally who clashed with the former president in 2023 and early last year during a contentious 2024 GOP presidential nomination race, mended relations a bit with the former president after the primary season. 

DeSantis endorsed Trump and helped raise money for the Republican nominee’s general election campaign.

Reynolds, the conservative two-term governor, drew Trump’s ire during the presidential primaries by endorsing DeSantis and serving as his top surrogate during the Iowa caucuses.

‘Excited to meet with President @realDonaldTrump tonight at Mar-a-Lago,’ Reynolds wrote in a social media post. ‘I stand ready to help enact his agenda of Making America Safe, Prosperous, and Great Again!’

Youngkin, who mulled a 2024 White House run of his own before deciding against it, teamed up with Trump a couple of times during the general election campaign.

Kemp, who in November took over as chair of the Republican Governors Association, was heavily criticized by Trump after refusing to help Trump overturn his razor-thin defeat to President Biden in Georgia in the 2020 election. And Trump urged, and then supported, a 2022 GOP gubernatorial primary challenge against Kemp by former Sen. David Purdue. But the former president toned down his criticism of the governor after Kemp crushed Perdue to easily win renomination on his way to re-election.

The two politicians appeared to patch up their differences in recent months, as Kemp supported Trump in the general election.

Politico was first to report on Trump’s dinner with the governors.