DeSantis criticises Trump after leaving race
Florida governor Ron DeSantis is talking like a newly liberated man now that he’s no longer running against Donald Trump.
On Tuesday, ahead of the New Hampshire primary, DeSantis spoke to Iowa conservative talk show host Steve Deace, who had endorsed him, and pointed out a number of weaknesses for the former president going into the general election.
DeSantis dropped out on Sunday after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses and endorsed Trump.
Nevertheless, it’s been a very ham-fisted endorsement since then. He said his campaign noticed not only the low turnout in the caucuses but also the lack of enthusiasm.
“It turned out these are folks who did they were conservative, but they did not want to see Trump nominated again,” he said on the show.
“But they had basically been told that it was inevitable, that it was over, that why even bother, and they just totally dropped out of the process.” DeSantis noted that 110,000 people showed up the caucuses last week while 186,000 people had turned out in 2016.
“That shows you there’s a lot of our voters who have checked out,” he said, overlooking the sub-zero temperatures and snow in Iowa that will also have kept people away from the caucuses.
DeSantis also took a swipe at Trump by saying that he won an overwhelming re-election victory in 2022 whereas Trump made a series of endorsements of losing candidates in that year’s midterms.
Ron DeSantis announces the suspension of his campaign on Sunday
(Ron DeSantis/X)
“I think that when you when I got into the when I thought about running after my re-election, that was when Trump’s candidates had wiped out in the midterm,” he said.
“I think there were a lot of Republicans at the time, who were like, you know, ‘the governor has shown that these bold policies not only do they work in practice, they work politically. We can win big Trump’s candidates did and then I think they’re like, you know, maybe not the nominee. Again, thank him for his service.’”
DeSantis repeated a line that my colleague Gustaf Kilander and I heard in our write-up of DeSantis’s last stand: that the indictment of Trump in Manhattan and elsewhere weakened him.
Similarly, he repeated his criticism of conservative media.
“I think he had strong support from Fox and conservative media,” he said.
“And so structurally that was just something that was very difficult to deal with.”
DeSantis also warned that many Republicans are tired of Trump.
“I observed voters who are conservative voters who voted for Trump and 16 and 20. And he said, you know, they’re just not doing it again,” he said.
He also warned Trump would generate turnout among Democrats.
“I think you just have the effect that the Democrats have a very effective playbook on some of these independent voters when they caricature our candidates or can run against Trump directly that even if they don’t like some of the what the Democrats are doing, that’s enough to get them to default back to Democrats,” he said.
Of course, DeSantis is likely still frustrated about Trump beating him – to say nothing of Trump’s constant insults toward him where Trump even hinted that DeSantis preyed on teenaged girls – and he is likely lashing out.
Similarly, now that he’s no longer trying to compete for the same pool of voters, he’s likely trying to set himself up to be – as my colleague John Bowden has said – Trump’s successor should he lose to President Joe Biden.
