Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday he observed a "lack of enthusiasm" among Republican voters during last week's Iowa caucuses and called it a "huge warning sign" for the GOP's prospects for this year's election.
DeSantis suspended his presidential campaign Sunday after finishing a distant second to former President Donald Trump in Iowa on Jan. 14.
"When I have people come up to me who voted for Reagan in '76 and have been conservative their whole life say that they don't want to vote for Trump again, that's a problem," he told BlazeTV on Tuesday in his first interview since dropping out.
With just 110,000 caucusgoers participating in Iowa this year, turnout was much lower than in 2016, when 187,000 took part. Hawkeye State residents braved life-threatening cold temperatures to kick off the national nominating process. But DeSantis attributed the decreased turnout to something more.
"I think there's an enthusiasm problem overall, and then I also just think there are some voters that have checked out at this point that you got to find a way to get them back," he said.
DeSantis criticized the news coverage of the GOP primary, claiming that major media outlets hurt his campaign by portraying Trump's nomination as "inevitable."
"We started noticing this in the fall, where voters who had caucused in 2016, previous caucusgoers, when they were being polled, they said they're definitely not caucusing," DeSantis said. "[The voters] did not want to see Trump nominated again, but they had basically been told that it was inevitable, that it was over."
Despite campaigning against the former president for months, DeSantis threw his support behind Trump after dropping out of the race. But he predicted that the number of "checked out" voters would increase as Trump racks up primary victories.
"Those are the voters you need to be competitive," he said.
In an interview conducted before he ended his campaign, DeSantis made similar comments, telling "New Hampshire Today with Chris Ryan" that the media depressed support for the other Republican candidates by inflating Trump's support.
"I mean, I think that the reality is, is this a guy that has not been willing to debate," DeSantis said, referring to Trump. "He's not been willing to answer questions from voters. He's basically run a basement campaign. And so far, he's gotten away with it because I think he hasn't been hit by the media for it."
"He's got a phalanx of favorable media," he said. "Any center-right-leaning media has really rallied behind him."
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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