RDS
He would be good but he does not have what Trump has.
1. The drive, whether it's narcissistic self-aggrandizement or something else, to risk everything (prison, wealth, life even) for his cause. I don't see DeSantis withstanding that level of persecution; I feel like he'd cave to the establishment. He has a more normal sense of self-preservation.
2. The ability to get the message to the people that his cause
is the people. Trump's cause is not ideology, it's us. The feeling from DeSantis is that his cause is conservatism. Nothing wrong with that, it's better than leftism, but it is still a remote abstract rather than down in the trenches with us.
3. The foreign business experience in different cultures which is part of why Trump kept us out of war. The other part is the very thing he's criticized for: He's so crazy he'll pop off WW3, which is the very thing that prevents it. Putin was unsure if Trump would bomb Moscow like he threatened if he invaded Ukraine, so he didn't do it. DeSantis might do fine in foreign affairs but right now it is a total unknown, and he lacks the "crazy" aspect that is part of Trump's arsenal.
4. Billions of dollars. DeSantis is not wealthy enough to be immune from monetary bribery or threats.
DeSantis would be fine in a normal world as would many others, but right now we don't have a normal world, we have an immediate threat of an irreversible oligarchical hardening that puts the elite first and the regular citizen last. We need more than a good leader, we need a unique warrior for this. Trump is RARE. We're not gonna get another one in our lifetime.