DeSantis PAC spotlights Trump attacks on GOP governors

A super PAC aligned with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign is hitting the airwaves in Iowa and New Hampshire with ads calling out former President Donald Trump’s recent attacks on the popular Republican governors in both states.

“Joe Biden is destroying America, and instead of looking to America’s future, Trump is busy attacking Republican governors,” the Never Back Down-sponsored commercials state before highlighting the 77-year-old’s criticisms of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.

“When I spoke to Kim, I said, ‘Wow, you want to remain neutral?’ I said, ‘That’s strange.’ Without me, you know, she was not gonna win. You know that right?” the 45th president is heard saying of Reynolds in the Iowa-focused ad.

In the New Hampshire ad, Trump calls the Granite State governor “a nasty guy” and “cuckoo.”

The commercial also spotlights a Truth Social post mocking “Crybaby Chris Sununu.”

“That is not the way we win as Republicans,” DeSantis responds in both ads after the Trump footage. “The way you win as Republicans is to unite Republicans.”

The thirty-second ads will run in the early voting states as part of a seven-figure ad buy, Never Back Down said in a press release.

Another newly released ad, paid for by the DeSantis campaign, points out his service as a US Navy JAG officer who also deployed to Iraq with SEAL Team One and was awarded a Bronze Star.

The Florida governor, 44, and his fellow GOP presidential candidates are headed to the Iowa State Fair over the next ten days, with several participating in one-on-one chats with Reynolds to make their case for the party’s 2024 nomination.

Trump, leading by 39 percentage points in national primary polls, according to the RealClearPolitics average, is the only candidate to announce he will not sit down with the Iowa governor at the Des Moines fairgrounds.

DeSantis, who is in a distant second place in the average, has retooled his campaign in recent weeks, firing dozens of staffers and naming his gubernatorial chief of staff, James Uthmeier, the new campaign manager.

Generra Peck, the former campaign manager, has been shifted to chief strategist.

Former Never Back Down adviser David Polyansky has been tapped as Uthmeier’s deputy.

DeSantis’ largest individual donor also made headlines last week when he pledged to withhold funding unless the campaign attracts new contributors and takes a moderate turn.

“He’ll lose if he doesn’t,” Las Vegas-based hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, who has given $20 million to Never Back Down, told Reuters. “Extremism isn’t going to get you elected.”