Jason Miller, advisor to former President Donald Trump, says viewers witnessed “the death of Ron DeSantis’s campaign” during Wednesday’s GOP debate.

Miller added that businessman Vivek Ramaswamy “leapfrogged” over the Florida governor.

“We saw the death of Ron DeSantis’s campaign tonight as Vivek Ramaswamy leapfrogged him into second place,” Miller said during an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press. “DeSantis, it didn’t do good enough for him to tread water. He had to have a breakout moment, and Ramaswamy completely outshone him.”

DeSantis has consistently been in second place ahead of Ramaswamy throughout the primary season, but the latest Emerson College poll has the two tied with ten percent support each. The latest numbers show a massive drop in support for the governor from the 21 percent he had in June.

Trump remains the clear frontrunner, with 56 percent support.

The poll, conducted by J.L. Partners, asked 504 Republicans questions about their views of the debate for the Daily Mail.

When asked who had the best debate performance, 28 percent said Ramaswamy, and 27 percent said DeSantis.

Former Vice President Mike Pence came in third with 13 percent, followed by Tim Scott with eight percent, Nikki Haley with seven percent, Chris Christie with four percent, Doug Burgum with three percent, Asa Hutchinson with two percent. Nine percent said that they “don’t know.”

Trump did not attend the debate, instead sitting down for a massively viral interview with Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“I knew [former] President Trump wasn’t going to be there tonight,” Miller said. “I didn’t know Ron DeSantis was going to skip the debate as well.”

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