Ron DeSantis largely dismissed his own decision to replace his campaign leadership team as he returned to Iowa on Thursday in the midst of a weeks-long reset. The Republican presidential hopeful also made no mention of the two rounds of campaign layoffs he made recently in response to unexpected fundraising troubles.
Instead, the Florida governor leaned into his central message — a self-described “war on woke” — and flashed a big smile as he courted an audience of roughly 200 cheering Republicans gathered at a family restaurant for the first of four scheduled stops on his latest bus tour through the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
