Ron DeSantis will quietly start building his off-ramp from 2024

After a humiliating loss in Iowa, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is beginning to signal that he is building an exit in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, an apparent acknowledgment of his dim prospects for defeating Donald J. Trump given his low standing. polls in New Hampshire and South Carolina.

So far this week, Mr. DeSantis has his eyes on 2028 with anecdotes about Trump supporters saying they would vote for him next time if he runs again in four years. He has admitted that Trump's landslide victory in Iowa on Monday made for a “good performance in terms of winning the nomination.” And he has openly admitted that he believes he made a strategic mistake by sidelining traditional media earlier in the campaign.

It all amounted to a kind of candor that Mr. DeSantis has not always shown in his public comments about the nominating contest — and a marked change in tone for a candidate who spent much of the past year boldly promising that he would win Iowa, that he lost. with 30 points.

On Thursday, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Mr. DeSantis whether his campaign would hold up through the end of March. The Governor of Florida responded that things didn't necessarily go according to plan.

“Look, my goal is to win the nomination. If we had won Iowa, we would have been in a great spot,” Mr. DeSantis said, before suggesting that there would be no point in staying in the race if it became clear to him that he could not win.

“I don't want to be vice president, I don't want to be in the Cabinet, I don't want a TV show,” he said. “I do everything I can to win, and if at some point that doesn't work out for you, I recognize that. This is not vanity for me.”

Mr. DeSantis' comments indicate a hard truth is emerging: The former president may be on the verge of dropping out of the race. Mr. DeSantis is performing so poorly in New Hampshire, where voting takes place on Tuesday, that he is campaigning all weekend in South Carolina, where the primary will be held a month later and where he thinks he has a better chance. He follows Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, in both states.

Andrew Romeo, the communications director for the DeSantis campaign, reiterated that Mr. DeSantis was in the race “for the long haul,” across South Carolina and beyond.

His best hope to stay competitive, his aides say, is for Ms. Haley to lose her home state and retire on Feb. 24, leaving Mr. DeSantis with a one-on-one matchup against Mr. Trump. “No one will fund a bubble-wrap candidate who can't win her home state,” Mr. Romeo argued.

But Super Tuesday, when 16 states and territories vote on March 5, is well poised for Mr. Trump to dominate, polls show, even in a two-person race against Mr. DeSantis. In that case, Mr. DeSantis may consider running again in 2028, the year after his term as governor ends.

On Tuesday, in South Carolina, Mr. DeSantis said Trump voters in Iowa had told him they would support him in four years. “They came to me and said, 'We want you in 2028, we love you, man,'” Mr. DeSantis told reporters.

He made similar comments during an interview with NBC News, saying, “People came up to me and said, 'I love you, man. This time I'm going to do Trump and next time you.' That's not what I wanted to hear, but by being there we made an impression and that's important.”

And during his interview with Mr Hewitt, he praised Mr Trump's performance.

“Obviously, if you win Iowa by the amount he won, that's what you want to do if you're going to win the nomination,” Mr. DeSantis said. He then expressed regret over his campaign's early strategy of limiting his media appearances to Fox News and other conservative outlets, acknowledging his failure to reach a large enough group of voters.

“I should have just blanketed, I should have gone to all the company shows, I should have gone to everything,” he told Mr Hewitt in a moment of introspection. “We had an opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that and reach a much broader population.”

Although he has carved out his image as a conservative warrior in Florida by bashing traditional media, he and his team have also turned on Fox recently, accusing the company of trying to smear the former president.

Mr. DeSantis, who has campaigned relentlessly and without complaint for months, also indicated this week that the rigors of the race were beginning to wear him down — a rare admission. On Tuesday morning, Mr. DeSantis woke up in Iowa after his stinging defeat in the caucuses, flew to South Carolina for a rally and press conference, then traveled to New Hampshire to participate in an evening town hall event on CNN.

The next day, after two more campaign events in New Hampshire, a weary-looking Mr. DeSantis confessed to reporters that it had been “a rough patch.”

“By the time I walked on that stage last night for CNN, I mean, it was adrenaline,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And I thought, 'Okay, we've got to get through this.' ”

Maggie Astor And Nick Corasaniti reporting contributed.