Ron DeSantis Never Back Down PAC chief strategist, Jeff Roe, admitted the campaign has just 60 days to stop Donald Trump, demanding an additional $50 million from donors before the second Republican primary debate on September 27.
Never Back Down also halted its paid door-knocking efforts in Super Tuesday primary states in what appears to be cost-cutting moves as it shifts resources into Iowa, including the $12 million ad-buy announced earlier this week.
“If you have an education, if you have higher income, if you read the Bible, and if you go to church regularly, you happen to be a DeSantis supporter,” Roe said.
The DeSantis campaign has failed to gain traction in polling and currently trails Trump by double digits in most state primary contests, so their plan to “stop Trump” is unlikely to succeed.
As The Daily Fetched reported earlier this week, a super PAC set up to back DeSantis has closed after donors backed out because of ‘rookie s**t’ mistakes, while its founder announced he would switch to Trump.
Republican strategist John Thomas set up ‘Ron to the Rescue’ in November, securing financial commitments from mega-wealthy donors.
However, the donors began having second thoughts after the botched DeSantis campaign launched on glitch-ridden Twitter Spaces in May,
The Twitter Spaces disaster saw DeSantis being interviewed by Elon Musk, but the feed repeatedly cut out, making the campaign appear incompetent.
“We were hoping to do like a formal TV campaign of air support when DeSantis officially launched,” Thomas told the Daily Mail.
“But the problem with that is with the Twitter Spaces blunder, like almost from the get-go, all of our major donors said, “let’s just see how this plays out.”
“There is one singular important thing every national presidential candidate must do on their launch day, which is provide video to give to the television stations to project optically what your vision is for the future,” he added.
Earlier this month, a major DeSantis donor, hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, announced he would not donate any more than the $20 million he had already given to the Florida governor unless he adopted a more moderate approach.
Thomas said he is figuring out how to help raise money for former president Trump in his campaign.
“We’re going to see after the reporting period of September 30 how Trump’s cash on hand is, and then we’re going to try to determine where we can fill in gaps if it’s needed,” said Thomas.
