Shake up the Republican primary and the race for the White House Florida Governor Ronda Santis just announced that he will drop out of the race in a video posted on the Platform X. It comes two days before the first primary in the nation, in New Hampshire.
Ron DeSantis
“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 suspending my campaign today.”
today’s news makes the Republican primary effectively a two-person race, Naow with the front runner former President Trump, facing off against his former un Ambassador Nikki Haley, polls show her trailing Trump by double digits in New Hampshire Dan Santis also endorsing former President Trump instead of Haley in today’s Announcement
Well, there was some chaos leading up to this announcement. He had canceled his morning media appearances he was supposed to appear on this network this morning on Meet the Press They canceled that they were supposed to be in South Carolina, but then they pivoted to an event tonight in New Hampshire.
That event is now canceled, and I am told by sources close to the campaign that he is now in Florida, so any more that we’re going to hear from the governor is going to come from Tallahassee.
Now, this is especially striking to hear from the Florida governor that he is endorsing former President Trump, given that the thrust of this campaign was his battle with the former president.
You’ll remember at the outset of this he was seen as the main potential alternative to take on the former president. This was the guy that at the beginning of this Kate was seen as the rising star in the Republican party but at the outset from the beginning, this is a campaign that really struggled to get off the ground from a launch on Twitter spaces that was full of glitches to a campaign that ran out of money halfway through last year.
A really difficult time finding his message finding a connection with the voters and here we are today dropping out and endorsing former President Trump with whom he had a bitter battle throughout this campaign.
The insults flew back and forth, especially from former president Trump but this is something that was starting to coalesce over the last several days as we started to get a sense from the campaign of a little bit of the air the wind T being taken out of the sales cap I did interview the governor the day after he came in a distant second in the Iowa caucuses and he told me an anecdote that
A voter came up to him and said, I’m going to vote for Trump this time but I’ll vote for you next time this might be the best chance that the governor has of preserving his political future given the polling here in New Hampshire had him now coming in a distant third and South Carolina wasn’t looking much better, not a clear path forward for him now on a one-on-one with
Nikki Haley But what I’ll tell you is that what our numbers have shown over this campaign because Ronda Santis campaigned to try to chip away at former president Trump’s voters is going to be potentially creating some obstacles for Nikki Haley now that Dan Santis is out of the race and that he is endorsing former president Trump because that vote share that ballot share is very likely to now mostly go to former president Trump, potentially creating even more of an uphill climb.
Well he’s going to wait out until he’s going to finish this term but his political future is a huge question As you know former president Trump leaves a lot of corpses in his weight There are plenty of candidates
who have gone up against former President Trump and have sort of squandered their Futures once they have come up against that Juggernaut, and that was a fear from the start for Florida Governor Dan Santis I remember donors and supporters at the beginning, when he was starting to struggle to find a message and find his footing
when it came to former president Trump, not quite attacking him, but not quite you know praising him or supporting him either, like some candidates like V Ramaswami, some supporters were worried about what this might mean for his prospects
Now he hopes that he has finished potentially strong enough to have a future given that he has had a few good moments in the last couple of debates, and that he might be able to you know have a better road ahead if he were to be able to try again in 2028 which he could do given the term that he has as governor.