For the foreseeable future, there will continue to be a group of Republican voters not willing to keep voting for Republican establishment politicians who are most noteworthy for their strongly conservative rhetoric at election time and their French-like surrender to Democrat demands as soon as elections are over. The names may change, but the driving force will remain the same.
They will vote for people who call out the establishment and promise to actually stand up for their voters.
Trump leveraged the working class distrust of Hillary Clinton to make the anti-establishment faction described above grow to the point that it is now in control of the Party, as witnessed by Trump's pending third time nomination for GOP candidate for president.
DeSantis was well fixed to take over that Trump voting block after his political or physical demise. Either Trump would have lost the General election and faded into obscurity, leaving the field for DeSantis, or won, likely with DeSantis as VP or some other top slot like SecState to prepare him for 2028.
I don't know what DeSantis is thinking taking on Trump in a Quixotic attempt to de-throne him.