Both camps have denied any real friction, and they blamed “the media” for overhyping tensions, but Trump advisers say they see a hidden hand at play: that of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who is in a pitched battle with Trump over the future of the Republican Party in political races all over the country.

They pointed to the podcast itself, because DeSantis made the attention-grabbing remarks on Ruthless, which is co-hosted by McConnell’s longtime adviser Josh Holmes. Shortly after the podcast was posted Friday, Twitter was flooded with the suggestion that DeSantis had knocked Trump by saying one of his biggest regrets was not having been “louder” about the harms of the lockdowns intended to help slow the spread of the virus.

To many in Trump’s camp, it all looked like a setup.

“I like Josh. Josh is great. But he’s a wholly owned subsidiary of McConnell World. And there’s no way you can tell me that this was all a coincidence,” a top Trump adviser said, echoing four others who spoke on condition of anonymity because they didn’t have authorization to speak publicly about private discussions in his political shop.