Ron DeSantis didn’t think Donald Trump could win in 2024, had to walk it back to Trump himself

Gov. Ron DeSantis told Sean Hannity this week that he ran against Donald Trump for President because he didn’t think Trump could win given his legal issues.

And once DeSantis endorsed Trump after the Governor won zero counties in Iowa — despite DeSantis spending the better part of six months in the state before the caucuses that ultimately ended his presidential campaign — DeSantis is now recounting that he had to walk back his previous position.

“I endorsed him and then I met with him,” DeSantis said, noting that Trump bluntly told DeSantis that he “shouldn’t have run.”

“And I was like, ‘I didn’t think you would win. I do think you can win now. They’re throwing everything against you, but I think you can do it,’” DeSantis recalled.

He told Hannity that Trump’s legal woes caused voters to rally to his support.

“I would go in these early states — I remember a guy came up to me and he’s like, ‘You’re going to be a better president than Ronald Reagan.’ I’m thinking to myself, oh great. He’s like, ‘If Trump weren’t running, I’d vote for you.’ I’m like, well, what the hell? How am I going to overcome that? You think I would be better than Reagan, and you still won’t vote for me?” DeSantis said.

“So I think, especially once he got indicted, I felt that the voters, they really wanted to close ranks.”

DeSantis also won’t commit to another run, saying the “timing” wasn’t right last time.

“We’ll see. I mean, I think that in ’24, like in Iowa, the people that voted for Trump — if he wasn’t running, I would have gotten like 90% of those people. They were conservative voters, right? They didn’t want the non-conservative. They wanted me. But the timing didn’t work out, obviously, for that. So, you just got to see what happens.”

Most polling of the nascent race finds DeSantis pulling between 5% and 10% support, far behind Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

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Gabrielle Russon of Florida Politics contributed to this report.