The DeSantis campaign burn rate is “bad,” Jack Posobiec, senior editor of Human Events, told Breitbart News during an exclusive interview at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida.
“I can’t speak for the reasoning behind the campaign for not showing up,” Posobiec said after Breitbart News noted that despite being invited, DeSantis declined to attend the event taking place in his home state. Notably, other presidential contenders, including former President Donald Trump, anti-woke businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, attended the conference.
“We’ve all seen the headlines over the past couple of weeks” of DeSantis down in the polls, cutting staff, and a “bad burn rate” in terms of donations, Posobiec observed.
“People point to the super PAC and say, ‘Oh, the super PAC’s got all this money.’ Ok, but his campaign burn rate is bad. And that’s bad because of the lack of small dollar donors,” he said, explaining that roughly 15 percent of the campaign’s donations are small dollar, “which means 85 [percent] are these high dollar donors, which means you haven’t built out the infrastructure for that small dollar base.”
He contrasted that with Vivek Ramaswamy — as well as Andrew Yang and Tulsi Gabbard in the past — asserting their campaigns were better at building that base.
“If your campaign is so, so top heavy with that corporate money, you know, that’s great for a launch. That’s great for getting started, but it’s not sustainable, because your actual campaign has to keep going,” he explained, citing reporting that DeSantis could be meeting with donors “trying to talk about resetting the campaign [and] reshuffling the campaign staff.”
Posobiec added that he believes there was a “fundamental misread” of the Republican electorate “and particularly the Republican base, because people had this notion, they say, ‘Oh, well, you know, he can do Trumpism without Trump.'”
“I get where if you just keep repeating that you might start believing it. But then the question is, that leaves out of the analysis a key factor, and that key factor is voters,” he said.
“I think a lot of the DeSantis campaign just came across like Bud Light, you know, like, why wouldn’t I just go for the real thing when I could have like a lesser version of the real thing,” he said, asserting there was “potentially an opening in November, December, January, when I think a lot of people were putting the blame of the midterms and they felt there was a Republican underperformance and putting that on Trump.”
“There was a time possibly a window, where if DeSantis had asserted dominance in that timeframe, and said, ‘I’m making an attack on the alpha. I’m moving in.’ But he wasn’t direct. He did all these sort of indirect plays,” he added, pointing to DeSantis’s long-winded book tour and subtle criticisms of Trump, including his failure to quickly react to the Alvin Bragg indictment.
“In politics and in media, people want that visceral gut response. And especially with social media, you want to know what everyone’s saying at a given time and people you might say, ‘Oh, that’s not fair.’ Well, you know, tough cookies right? That’s the game now. And he doesn’t want to play it,” he added.
His remarks coincided largely with Donald Trump Jr.’s, as he also told Breitbart News that DeSantis is having issues with small donors, observing that they are “almost non-existent, making up 15 percent of his take.”
“I think that’s sort of the Never Trump billionaire donor movement, right?” he said of DeSantis’s backing. “The people who you know, they say they’re for America, but you know, if they can get their widget for half a cent cheaper by getting it from China, that’s their guy.”
“You can create a lot of personality with social media influencers, as they have done for the last two years sort of de facto running against Trump. The reality is, in a Republican primary, like eventually you have to put that guy on the stage. And let’s just say, you know, once you get to know Ron DeSantis, you get to not like Ron DeSantis,” he added.
WATCH– Donald Trump Jr.: Never Trump Billionaire Donor Movement Largely Behind DeSantis Bid
WATCH the full interview below: