DeSantis ends his Republican presidential campaign and will endorse Trump

(CNN) — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who entered the Republican presidential primary as Donald Trump’s biggest threat, announced Sunday that he is ending his run for the White House and is endorsing the former president.

His announcement, accompanied by a video posted on X, followed a disappointing second-place finish in the Iowa Republican caucuses last week.

“If I can do anything to get a favorable outcome, more rallies, more interviews, I will, 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. , today. I’m suspending my campaign,” DeSantis said.

He then declared his support for Trump: “Although I disagree with Donald Trump, for example, on the coronavirus pandemic and his appointment of Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to incumbent Joe Biden. That’s clear.”

“I signed a pledge to support the Republican candidate and I will stand by it. You have my support, because we cannot go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear or the repackaged form of overheated corporatism that Nikki Haley represents,” he said. said

His departure leaves former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley as Trump’s only alternative in the Republican race, but without much time to consolidate support and catch a front-runner.

The decision came after days of talks with his donors. By the end of the week it had become clear that there was neither reason nor financial support to continue his candidacy.

DeSantis and his wife Casey made the decision this Sunday afternoon, surprising many of his associates and supporters.

“The money just wasn’t there to continue,” a major DeSantis donor told CNN.

It was a devastating blow to the promising career of a rising Republican star, and his failure to live up to the high expectations of his candidacy sparked a wave of skepticism from close allies and advisers. Some believe DeSantis took too long to attack former President Donald Trump. Others believe his team underestimates former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.

Many are convinced that DeSantis could not have done anything to win favor from Trump’s loyal and large supporters.

“DeSantis pushed the playbook to the limit,” Steve Deace, a well-known conservative radio commentator and supporter of the Florida governor, told CNN in recent weeks. “It’s that simple: When they started impeaching Donald Trump, people weren’t ready to put it behind them. And for DeSantis, it wasn’t his time.

For his part, DeSantis attributed his performance to a series of challenges, including Iowa’s wintry weather, the conservative media’s loyalty to Trump and an unprecedented barrage of negative ads against him. One thing he did not criticize was his keynote address to voters – his record of accomplishments in Florida – which he continued to deliver in speech after speech until his final moments as a presidential candidate.

Last week’s result in Iowa was a particularly devastating blow. DeSantis promised to win the state, then predicted he would do well. Instead, he finished nearly 30 points behind Trump and barely edged Haley into second place, undermining his credibility with enthusiasm for her.

DeSantis vowed to keep fighting, but after Iowa, it became increasingly clear to many around him that his campaign was running its course.

Trump can now take credit for changing the political futures of three of the most prominent and promising Republican politicians in his adopted home state: DeSantis, former Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (the latter two of whom he bested in the US primaries. 2016 Republican election).

It’s unknown what’s next for DeSantis, who, at age 45, has three years left in his second term as governor. In recent weeks, DeSantis has planted the seeds for a potential 2028 run, saying some Trump supporters have encouraged him.

“They’re going to come up to me and say, ‘We love you in 2028, we love you, man,'” the governor recently told reporters.

DeSantis got off to an inauspicious start on his road to the Republican nomination. It wasn’t until his third term in the US House of Representatives in 2017 that he began making a name for himself as a staunch Trump defender on Fox News. Then on a website known as Twitter, Trump called DeSantis “a real fighter!”

With Trump’s endorsement, DeSantis won the Florida governorship in 2018. DeSantis spent the next four years charting a different course than his former teammate. He found his way by criticizing the medical community during the coronavirus pandemic and immersed himself in national controversies over immigration, education and LGBTQ issues, garnering media coverage from right-wing outlets along the way.

By the time of his 19-point re-election victory in 2022, the Republican Party’s red tide had faded elsewhere and many Trump-backed candidates were disillusioned, the presidential campaign was certain. Republicans looking to outrun Trump saw a remarkable resume: blue-collar origins, a minor league star, a collegiate athlete at Yale, a law degree from Harvard, a Navy veteran and a young, photogenic family.

Moreover, DeSantis did not lose political competition at that time.

“DeFuture,” declared the New York Post, a tabloid published by Rupert Muddock, on the morning after the midterm elections, with DeSantis and his wife, Casey, a top confidant, on the cover.

But DeSantis moved slowly into the race — first there was a book to sell and a legislative session to oversee — and, for once, he struggled to live up to those lofty expectations. More pertinently, DeSantis failed to convince other Republican presidential hopefuls that he and Trump were alone at the top of the Republican Party and spent the summer of 2023 competing against a crowded field rather than the former president.

The campaign trail proved to be a challenging environment for DeSantis, who was used to being courted and chastised by the media behind speeches. His political opponents gleefully increased his callous and clumsy contact with the electorate. In eight months as a candidate, he struggled to articulate a coherent justification for his candidacy and focused more on his past accomplishments as governor than on his ideas for the future.

His campaign was also plagued by spending increases and restructuring that dogged him throughout the summer. By the time Iowans gathered, his campaign had faced an exodus of staff and consultants and was no longer running ads.

Still, DeSantis remained a viable candidate until the polls opened, a testament to his relentless appetite for campaign stops and media appearances. In Iowa, for example, he visited all 99 counties and won the support of the state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds.

But it became clear in the days after the Iowa caucuses, when he seemed tired and frustrated, that the campaign had fizzled. DeSantis maintained, however, that he doesn’t regret running.

“If I had stayed on the sidelines and the Republicans had lost in 2024, people would have said, ‘Oh, well, you had a chance to do something and you didn’t do it,'” he said in a recent interview. . “So, anyone can sit on the sidelines and complain – enter the arena and fight for what they believe in.”

CNN’s Caitlan Collins and Jeff Zeleny. Contributed to this article.