Few people have demonstrated an ability to use leverage to make deals more than President-elect Donald Trump. He built his business career around the concept, and he’s demonstrated that those skills can be ported to the political world just as easily. And while the feverish speculation about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a potential Secretary of Defense nominee has become more muted this week, it’s still worth examining the idea from the perspective of political leverage as opposed to political necessity.

Let’s start with the fact that floating DeSantis’s name is not the same as offering him the job. The former is risk free. The latter is a mutually beneficial dance that requires political capital on both sides to be put at risk. It is the former, and not the latter, that is in play here. What else is in play is something far more subtle than a Secretary of Defense nomination, but just as interesting: Trump is doing all he can to influence DeSantis to appoint Lara Trump to the U.S. Senate to replace Marco Rubio, assuming that Rubio becomes Secretary of State as planned.

Don’t think for a moment that the president-elect is going to allow DeSantis to appoint whomever he wants to the U.S. Senate, at least not without playing a few trump cards designed to influence that choice and secure a commitment from Florida’s governor. This is vintage Trump: the calculated use of public praise and private back room promises to achieve poltical objectives.

Floating DeSantis’s name as SecDef was never about whether or not DeSantis will bite – or whether he even wants the job – both questions remain beside the point since Pete Hegseth is still in the running. The real story at the moment is the power play unfolding between DeSantis and Trump, what it reveals about Trump’s strategy to consolidate and wield influence, and what it will reveal about DeSantis’s ability to cut his own political deals and maximize political leverage when he has it.

There are undoubtedly many great Floridians who would do an honorable job representing Florida while serving alongside Rick Scott in the U.S. Senate. But only one of them come with presidential backing and the political capital that can be extracted as a result.

Lara Trump, a loyal family insider, is vocally seeking the job. In this context, the president-elect floating DeSantis’s name for a Pentagon post accomplishes two goals and costs Trump nothing. First, it sends a message to DC insiders that killing off Hegseth isn’t going to make much difference, because DeSantis would bring a similar back-to-the-basics, no-nonsense style of military leadership. Second, it sends a message to DeSantis that, just maybe, all has been forgiven with respect to DeSantis’s presidential primary challenge.

Trump has a long history of magnanimity, often offering an olive branch to those who have challenged him in the past. Rubio himself is only one of the most recent examples, having been one of Trump’s longest-lasting opponents in the 2016 presidential contest, but now granted one of the most plum appointments in any presidential administration.

Still, Trump has dangled other carrots, and then yanked them away. Who can forget his famous dinner with Mitt Romney in late 2016 after Romney so vocally opposed Trump? Many thought Romney might get the Secretary of State job eight years ago, but it turns out it was nothing more than a Trump power play to humiliate him.

The difference is that in 2016, Romney had nothing to offer Trump. DeSantis, by contrast, holds a Senate appointment in his hands, which completely changes the dynamics. From Trump’s perspective, floating DeSantis’s name for prestigious cabinet roles is an easy way to flatter the Florida governor while applying subtle pressure: make the Senate appointment that Trump wants, and DeSantis will continue to be showered in love and adoration from the president.

But the flip side is also true: don’t make the appointment Trump wants, and expect the olive branch offered by Trump to dry up. It’s a classic case of political leverage, playing out before our very eyes.

Comically, other political outlets are speculating about whether or not DeSantis will become Secretary of Defense. But that’s not the real question. The real, and for now, only question, and one that has carries profound implications for DeSantis’s political future, is whether or not he’s going to appoint Lara Trump to the U.S. Senate, and what DeSantis will get in return.