How DeSantis' early missteps hobbled his U.S. presidential bid
By Gram Slattery, James Oliphant, Nathan Layne
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had a chance in April to address Donald Trump's growing momentum toward the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Like several such opportunities, he let it pass him by.
DeSantis was in Japan at the time on an international tour – a step often taken by presidential hopefuls to burnish their foreign policy credentials. Trump had launched his own candidacy five months earlier and had spent much of that time attacking the governor, who was considered his most formidable potential challenger but had yet to declare.
Asked on camera about falling behind Trump in the polls, DeSantis awkwardly played coy. His eyes opened wide and his head wobbled from side to side as he tried to avoid answering the question, in what became a viral video clip.
«I'm not … I'm not a candidate, so we'll see if and when that changes,» the governor said.
Allies, advisers, and people close to the campaign now concede that DeSantis' reluctance in the weeks before announcing his candidacy to engage with Trump — on the Japan trip and elsewhere — was one of several costly strategic errors.
Reuters spoke to 16 political operatives and donors close to DeSantis to reconstruct the roughly 10-week period from mid-March — before Trump's first criminal indictment in New York — to DeSantis' campaign launch on May 24.
Several of the people said those weeks are crucial to understanding why DeSantis, once seen as the party's best hope of moving on from the tumult surrounding Trump, is now almost 40 points behind the former president, according to the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
The unforced errors in that early stage had a lasting impact on DeSantis' campaign, they
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