Ron DeSantis’ advisors say they are ‘preparing to make the patient comfortable’ as his once-promising presidential bid nears life support with campaign funds drained, his biggest super PAC demoralized and Trump surging in the polls

A spokesman for Rod DeSantis’ embattled presidential campaign has slammed a “hit media job” amid claims they have privately admitted his race is all but over.

Support for the Florida governor has fallen from 35 percent to 12 percent in the race for the Republican nomination as Donald Trump cemented his clear lead in the Iowa caucus in just three weeks.

As DeSantis battles Nikki Haley for second place in the polls, one campaign manager said their job now is to “make the patient comfortable,” aides said The newspaper “New York Times.

The newspaper spoke with a dozen people close to DeSantis’ campaign following the fall turmoil that led to open antagonism between his campaign team and supporters at the Never Back Down Super PAC.

“You’re running against a former president, you need to be perfect and you’ll get lucky,” one said.

“We were unlucky and far from perfect.”

The resignation of Super PAC strategist Jeff Rowe last week came at the end of a months-long bloodbath that also saw the ousting of his campaign manager, two Super Pac executives and its chairman.

And some have pointed the finger at the governor’s preference for working with his trusted Florida friends rather than seasoned campaign professionals.

Super PACs are supposed to maintain arm’s length relationships with the candidates they support to comply with campaign finance laws, but DeSantis made sure he had three old friends overseeing Roe on the Never Back Down board of governors .

Rowe lashed out at one of them, the governor’s college classmate Scott Wagner, last month, reportedly telling him, “You’ve got a stick up your ass, Scott,” as they rowed about how the campaign burned through $100 million.

“Why don’t you come here and pick it up?” Wagner allegedly responded by telling NBC that the two men “almost came to blows.”

The meeting led to the resignation of Super PAC executive director Chris Jankowski, who had helped oust campaign manager Jenerra Peck several months earlier.

She was replaced by James Utmyer, who served as DeSantis’ chief of staff in the governor’s office but had no campaign experience.

Meanwhile, Wagner was appointed chairman of the super PAC and vigorously defended the governor.

“Never Back Down has built a massive ground game with a robust infrastructure that allows us to bring the governor’s accomplishments and vision to voters across the country,” he told the Times.

But over the weekend, the Super PAC pulled out of $2.5 million in ad orders in Iowa and New Hampshire amid claims it was sidelined by the governor’s faltering poll results.

A new super PAC called Fight Right is now working on the governor’s behalf, but it is struggling to attract the level of donations that surged when DeSantis led the election.

Meanwhile, the professionals he rejected continued to work for the Trump campaign, taking with them their inside knowledge of the governor’s weaknesses.

And some of those who remained spoke to the newspaper about the missteps that have dogged DeSantis’ campaign since it officially launched live on X (formerly Twitter) in late May.

Technical glitches prevented many from tuning in, and while Peck boasted that he had “broken the Internet,” Trump responded with a one-word response, “DeSaster.”

The governor’s high profile early on made him a prime target for other candidates wary of antagonizing Trump’s support base, and DeSantis began attracting more negative advertising than all the others combined.

It has also given Trump supporters in conservative media a tough time.

“I used to think that in the Republican primaries you could just host Fox News and talk on the radio and stuff,” he told conservative news anchor Steve Deese in October.

“And, number one, I don’t think that’s enough, but number two, there’s the fact that our conservative media sphere, you know, doesn’t necessarily promote conservatism. They also have plans.

Never Give Up said it had knocked on two million doors by September, but nearly half of them were outside the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The governor’s friend’s undue influence was blamed for the Super PAC’s biggest week of ad spending in Iowa, which took place in June, a full seven months before the caucus.

And the super PAC tasked with attracting huge amounts of donations from small donors still received less than $1 million.

DeSantis is the only candidate to speak in the caucuses of all 99 Iowa counties, but he struggled in the first televised debate.

And his awkward public persona has become the center of media attention, according to strategist Stuart Stevens, who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and said DeSantis came across as “Ted Cruz without personality.”

“There was a superficial impression that DeSantis was in the mold of the big state governors who won Republican nominations and were successful — Reagan, Bush, Romney,” he told the newspaper.

“But DeSantis is a very different kind of creature. These were positive, expansive and optimistic numbers. DeSantis does not.

The governor’s longtime pollster Ryan Tyson reportedly said the goal now is to “ensure the patient’s comfort” but has since publicly denied this.

And the campaign’s current communications director, Andrew Romeo, insisted its candidate was simply the subject of unfair media coverage.

“On another day, the same media broke the case based on unnamed sources with an agenda,” he told the Times.

“While the media tried to call this campaign dead back in August, Ron DeSantis fought back and entered the home stretch in Iowa as the hardest-working candidate with the strongest ground game.

“DeSantis has been underestimated in every race he’s ever entered, and he’s always proven the doubters wrong – we’re confident he’ll defy the odds again on January 15.”