Ron DeSantis Drops Out Of 2024 Race And Endorses Donald Trump

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, ending a faltering bid where he tried to cast himself as a Trump-like candidate in a race where so much of the Republican base ended up preferring the real thing.

In a videotaped message, DeSantis said that he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump.

DeSantis placed a distant second to Trump in Iowa last week, but he was far behind the former president and Nikki Haley in recent polls of New Hampshire voters. Instead, DeSantis had spent a good chunk of the last week in South Carolina, but he faced longshot prospects there, too. The superPAC supporting his candidacy, Never Back Down, laid off staffers after the Iowa caucuses.

DeSantis started last year as a prospective candidate who was giving Trump a serious challenge for the nomination. Coming off a landslide re-election bid as Florida governor, DeSantis had trumpeted his role in the culture wars, including taking on The Walt Disney Co. as “woke,” even though it was one of the largest employers in the state.

But Trump began to consolidate support as he faced multiple criminal indictments, charactering himself as under attack from the left. Save for a swipe at Trump for his Stormy Daniels hush money case, DeSantis muted his attacks and largely bought in to the former president’s grievance that his legal woes were politically motivated.

By the time that DeSantis officially entered the presidential race in May — in an audio-only Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk — there already were signs that he would face a challenge against Trump as he accelerated his attacks on him, calling him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” DeSantis also cocooned himself in right wing media, and he at times seemed awkward in the retail politics of the campaign trail.

While he initially blasted “woke” Disney in his attacks on the campaign trail for its opposition to a parental rights bill, known as “don’t say gay,” some rivals and other Republicans said he went too far in making the company a target. Haley, in fact, said that she would welcome the company to South Carolina.