Why DeSantis Says Trump’s Romp in Iowa Is Actually a Sign of His Weakness

To Donald J. Trump’s campaign, his win in the Iowa caucuses by a record 30-point margin was a sign he would steamroll to the nomination. To hear Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida tell it, the result was actually a sign of the former president’s weakness.

Mr. DeSantis began offering on Friday a public version of private commentary he has been making: that Mr. Trump’s failure to get much more than roughly 50 percent of the vote during caucuses with the lowest turnout in decades indicates an inability to galvanize the Republican base in a way that signals danger in a general election.

Speaking at a news conference outside the site of a planned debate that was canceled after Nikki Haley, a former United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, said she would not take part without her former boss onstage, Mr. DeSantis declared that Mr. Trump’s performance in Iowa was a “warning sign for the party in November.”

“It’s not that it was a weak result to win the caucus,” Mr. DeSantis said. “It’s a question of what does that portend for November and how the Republican base is going to be energized or not energized.”

Turnout in the Iowa caucuses was roughly 110,000 voters. That is about half of what campaigns had once expected, and far below the 186,000 who came out in 2016. “Yes, it was cold,” Mr. DeSantis explained. “Yes, the conditions weren’t great.”

But still.

“The overall danger sign is the low number of people that turned out,” he said.

Mr. DeSantis described Mr. Trump as essentially an incumbent, and said he thought that Mr. Trump, as a former president, should have done better in Iowa — despite Mr. DeSantis’s repeated predictions that he would win there.

“I kind of feel like Reagan would have won 80 percent, if he were — if he were running