Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently replaced his presidential campaign’s leadership in another shakeup of his White House efforts, as voices in right-wing media are slowly growing louder in suggesting that DeSantis’ campaign may already be on its way out.

As The Associated Press reported, DeSantis replaced his campaign manager with his gubernatorial chief of staff, who the AP also reported “has never managed a campaign.” This development after two rounds of staff layoffs, all months before voting begins, is contributing to an image in right-wing media that DeSantis’ “campaign is on life support,” and he is “at risk of becoming the next Scott Walker.”

“DeSantis has done the reset, then he did the reboot, then he did the retread — maybe he’s getting ready for the retreat,” former Trump adviser Steve Bannon mused on August 8. “You can tell, it’s just not happening, right? It’s not, it’s not — he’s not getting traction,” Bannon said, predicting that the Republican governor’s latest comment about Donald Trump losing the 2020 election will “take him down to single digits.”

“You can’t make arguments about electability if major majorities of the Republican electorate believes that Trump not only won once but twice,” replied his guest, right-wing pollster Richard Baris. “This campaign is on life support. It’s just getting ridiculous at this point.”

Pointing to a Fox & Friends interview with a Republican billionaire who praised Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Bannon later wondered, “Is this now Murdoch signaling strongly that they know the air’s out of the balloon on DeSantis, and they’re going to pivot Fox — which has been so all over DeSantis and pushing him so hard to actually make him relevant. Have they come to the conclusion that it’s over?” 

Baris replied that he believes “Murdoch checked out a month ago” along with several GOP megadonors after DeSantis’ failures to grow his appeal.

On The Daily Wire’s The Michael Knowles Show, the eponymous host noted that the Florida governor’s early rise was not driven by widespread support for his conservative policies, but because “the DeSantis mojo was based largely on the view that he could win the primary and the general. ‘He’s the only candidate who can beat Trump in the primary, and he’s a candidate much better-positioned to defeat Joe Biden in the general,’ that was the argument.” However, “the moment that it seems that DeSantis can’t win … it’s going to start to drop precipitously, as we have already seen.”

“It has been a bit of a collapse,” Knowles admitted, though he also claimed that “there’s still hope, he’s not out of the race yet.” 

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk also acknowledged the campaign’s collapse but suggested that DeSantis wasn’t finished yet, reviving a familiar refrain that 2028, not 2024, will be DeSantis’ year. Noting the large sums of money spent by DeSantis’ super PAC for his negligible returns in support, Kirk argued that if DeSantis dropped out now but said he will run again in 2028, “he would be in the pantheon of conservative legends. He would look like a team player.” 

Kirk’s guest, “Kane” of the Drudge Report knockoff Citizen Free Press, suggested that DeSantis could cement this legacy by diverting his remaining funds to right-wing groups like Turning Point USA to help the GOP win key swing states in 2024. 

“This was not the time for DeSantis to run,” Kane reiterated, adding that “2028 would be his time,” but the current race puts DeSantis “a little bit at risk of becoming the next Scott Walker” after the Trump campaign successfully painted him as a RINO. (Walker was once widely seen as a star of the Republican Party until his 2016 presidential campaign flamed out early, and he lost reelection as Wisconsin governor in 2018.)

Amid the Iowa State Fair, Washington Times commentary editor Kelly Sadler explained on Newsmax that DeSantis “was actually having a good fair event” — that is, until Trump “stole the thunder” from him. 

Sadler told Wake Up America that DeSantis had begun to have some success in Iowa with “resetting the reset button” and pushing “more of a comprehensive” vision, but then the former president “flew Trump Force One around the fairgrounds,” did a stump speech, and then “everyone was, you know, for Donald Trump, and wanted to get and see, you know, Donald Trump.”

“Ron DeSantis is betting all of his money, all of his chips on Iowa,” Sadler said. “But as you can see with Donald Trump, when he comes into the arena, all the headlines are on him. And with another possible indictment this week, it’s really hard for any other candidate to get any oxygen in this race.”

Back on Bannon’s War Room: Battleground, Baris analyzed what many in right-wing media see as a core problem with the Florida governor’s campaign, one which has followed him around since before he announced — the perception in right-wing media that DeSantis’ run in the GOP’s 2024 primary is a betrayal of the party’s one true leader. 

“DeSantis thought he did this all by himself,” complained Baris, referring to his popularity as the governor of Florida, “and we had to read for months ridiculous comments” from his presidential campaign about how DeSantis’ team is used to being underdogs, like in 2018 and 2022.

“You didn’t do anything,” he warned. “Donald Trump did it. You would've been a failed gubernatorial candidate without him.” 

“No MAGA [voters] would have turned out in Florida” to support DeSantis without Trump’s support, Bannon agreed. “Trump created you.”