Republican 2024 front-runner Donald Trump was complimentary of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) Sunday after the Florida governor dropped out of the GOP primary and endorsed him for president, even going so far as to tell his supporters the nickname “Ron DeSanctimonious” was “officially retired.”
While on the campaign trail in New Hampshire mere days before the state’s primary election, Trump’s campaign said they were “honored” by DeSantis’s endorsement and all the support from other Republican candidates that have since backed out.
In their statement, Trump’s team also directed their attention to his now sole rival for the GOP nomination: former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, making sure to take jabs at presumptive general election opponent President Joe Biden as well.
“With only a few days left until President Donald J. Trump’s victory in New Hampshire, we are honored by the endorsement from Governor Ron DeSantis and so many other former presidential candidates. It is now time for all Republicans to rally behind President Trump to defeat Crooked Joe Biden and end his disastrous presidency,” the statement read.
“Nikki Haley is the candidate of the globalists and Democrats who will do everything to stop the America First movement. From higher taxes, to decimating Social Security and Medicare, and to open borders, she represents the views of Democrats more than the views of Republicans. It’s time to choose wisely,” it continued.
DeSantis announced his plans to drop out of the race on Sunday in a video posted to X, in which he also endorsed Trump to be president. The two were rivals for months in the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses last week, with Trump in particular taking a combative approach on the campaign trail.
However, on Sunday, he had a markedly different attitude toward DeSantis, telling supporters at a campaign event that DeSantis was “a very capable person” shortly after hearing the news of the governor’s decision.
DeSantis was expected to be Trump’s No. 1 rival in the Republican presidential primary, but he was never able to gather the momentum to come close to the former president, eventually even being usurped by Haley for that spot. But in his announcement, coming just six days after a second-place finish in Iowa, he struck a largely positive tone.
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“Nobody worked harder, and we left it all out on the field. Now, following our second-place finish in Iowa, we’ve prayed and deliberated on the way forward. If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome, more campaign stops, more interviews, I would do it. But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don’t have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am, today, suspending my campaign.”
He also criticized Haley and Biden in his endorsement of Trump, saying, “Trump is superior to the current incumbent Joe Biden,” and “He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”