Instead, the influential pastor with a name right out of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow — Bob Vander Plaats — endorsed Ron DeSantis, the — let’s see if we have this right — disloyal, backstabbing, ungrateful, lying, lifts-wearing, artificial, favor-buying, cash-burning, tires-spinning, Bush-loving, sanctimonious tool of the globalist Uniparty.

Hallelujah. Where’s the Tylenol?

Here’s the charge, posted to Trump’s Truth Social site at 1:06 a.m. Wednesday.

TRUMP:

President Donald J. Trump made a post about the newest Ron DeSantis endorsement, saying:

"Ron DeDeSanctimonious, in an act of sheer desperation, paid Iowa preacher Bob Vander Plaats $100,000, and then got his Endorsement? We did not seek it. What is going on here?" pic.twitter.com/PUsP6f6p6b

— Anthony Hughes (@CallMeAntwan) November 22, 2023

That’s a whole bunch of vitriol-slinging so close to last call, proving, once again, Mom’s Axiom No. 237: Nothing good comes from occupying public spaces after midnight.

For its part, Rawstory was unimpressed.

Former President Donald Trump suggested, without offering any evidence, that a bribe had cost him a key endorsement from an influential Iowa evangelical leader.

The worst that can be said — a task for which Trump is uniquely qualified — is that months ago, DeSantis and allied groups made donations totaling $95,000 to the nonprofit Family Leader Foundation Vander Plaats oversees. But the pastor, asserting his endorsement “has never and never will be for sale,” counterclaimed Trump had committed the classic logical fallacy: post hoc ergo propter hoc: “Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X.”

Vander Plaats was already leaning DeSantis’ way, he explained. 

Bob Vander Plaats, who is an evangelical leader in Iowa, was the most recent to give DeSantis his seal of approval, prompting immediate attacks from the Trump campaign.

Announcing his endorsement on Fox News, he claimed his support was DeSantis’s to lose due to his 2022 election successes in Florida.

“They go to church with us. They’re in our homes. They come to our offices — the leadership summit,” he said, recalling DeSantis’s significant presence in Iowa.

The deal-sealer, Vander Plaats said, was DeSantis’ performance alongside GOP rivals Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, at the Family Leader’s Thanksgiving Family Forum.

“He was very clear about we need a president who can serve two terms, not one term,” Vander Plaats said. “I just think he’s got the spine to do it. And I think he’s got the experience to win for us.”

If only Trump had been given a chance to join the others at the table; surely he could have made a proper case about the marvels he could achieve despite being limited to a single term.

Wait. How’s that again? Trump was invited, but chose not to attend? Chose not to compete for the Vander Plaats blessing that he now suggests he was cheated out of? OK, then. Points for consistency.

But the preacher was not having it.

This is what happens when @realDonaldTrump can’t win on the merits. He makes stuff up and calls people names. #LookHigher #ThinkBigger #ExpectMore #ChooseWell2024 https://t.co/pKnvuIDCcQ

— Bob Vander Plaats (@bobvanderplaats) November 22, 2023

Viewed through Trump’s lens — that of a deal-squeezing developer-marketer-entrepreneur — No. 45’s charge is utterly understandable. To him, every relationship is, at the absolute center of its heart, transactional. You get this. I get that. Neat. Tidy. Bloodless. Vander Plaats’ organization got cash. Several months later, DeSantis gets endorsed by the Hawkeye faith leader who favored the winners of the last three contested Iowa caucuses.

In Trump World, there’s no room for compassion, relationships, reason, philosophy, teamwork, introspection or intuition. It’s all quid pro quo. That, surely, is much of why MAGA clings to the stolen-election conspiracy theories. Deep Staters wanted Trump out, because any minute, as promised, he was going to pull the plug on the swamp, so they did a super-secret deal in key states. Everybody got bought, somehow, and stayed bought.

We say again: You can believe that if you want to. Everyone else knows that the only way even two people can keep a secret is if one of them is dead. For these rejecters of sinister, elaborate conspiracies — knock wood — endorsements such as those of Vander Plaats’ and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds point the way toward a candidate proposing the renewal of Reagan-style conservatism.

There may be some transactionalism in that, but rather than the cynical brand that trusts no one and suspects everyone, it’s the sunny, welcoming and optimistic kind where everybody can win.

Especially those who are off the streets — real world and virtual — before midnight.