Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis painted former President Trump as a different candidate than he was in 2016, predicting that Iowans will be more inclined to pick a different candidate.
“I do think we’ve seen in the state recently, Donald Trump doing events and I just, I watch some of those events, see snippets of his speeches, and comparing him to 2016 Trump, versus now. You know, this is just a different guy,” DeSantis said Monday during a virtual press conference.
“He’s lost the zip on his fastball,” he added.
DeSantis, the governor of Florida, noted several recent examples of what he described as “head-scratching” remarks that Trump made, including Trump suggesting the recent school shooting was “just horrible, so surprising to see it here” during an Iowa rally before adding they have “to get over it, we have to move forward.”
The governor also noted Trump’s recent suggestion that the Civil War could have been negotiated to avoid the extent of the bloodshed.
“Some of the things he was talking about in terms of magnets underwater, saying that somehow the Perry shooting people just needed to get over it, were really head-scratching to hear that,” he said, adding “He even suggested that the Civil War could have … he could have potentially negotiated that somehow … he couldn’t even negotiate funding for a border wall when he had a Republican Congress.”
DeSantis argued the former president’s rhetoric will likely convince Hawkeye State voters to choose a different candidate next week during the Iowa caucuses.
“And so, I see that and I look and I think that the more Iowans see kind of this Trump versus the Trump that they knew, I think that you’re gonna see more and more people who are going to be open to go in a different direction,” he said.
In The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s Iowa polling average, Trump’s lead remains strong, with 51.6 percent of the vote in polls. He’s followed by DeSantis with 18 percent and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley with 17.1 percent.