DeSantis pulls out of race for president
Trump, Haley prepare for pivotal vote in GOP primary in New Hampshire
ROCHESTER, New Hampshire — Former US president Donald Trump aims to sew up the Republican presidential nomination after the contest narrowed to a two-horse race with Nikki Haley as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ announced his withdrawal on Sunday.
Trump set aside months of criticism and mockery of DeSantis on Sunday night, celebrating his onetime Republican rival as his newest supporter. The Florida governor has ended his presidential campaign and endorsed the former president.
For Trump, it’s become a familiar ritual to welcome the backing of someone who tried to take him on, The Associated Press reported. Nonetheless, it was notable at Sunday’s rally in New Hampshire to see Trump praise DeSantis without calling him “DeSantimonious” or “DeSanctus”, putting an end to perhaps the most bitter rivalry of Republicans’ 2024 campaign.
“I just want to thank Ron and congratulate him on doing a very good job,” Trump said at the outset of his remarks. “He was very gracious, and he endorsed me. I appreciate that, and I also look forward to working with Ron.” Trump described DeSantis as “a really terrific person”.
Earlier in the day, DeSantis said via video that he would be ending his campaign two days before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation GOP primary on Tuesday.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” DeSantis said.
“I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge,” he continued, before taking a dig at the remaining contender, Haley.
DeSantis described the former UN ambassador and onetime South Carolina governor as a stand-in for “the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism”.
According to a new CNN poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire, Trump holds 50 percent support among likely Republican primary voters in the state, while Haley stands at 39 percent. DeSantis stands at just 6 percent in the poll.
Trump, in his typical rally speech, mixed freewheeling attacks on President Joe Biden, the political media, “the deep state” and “warmongers” in Washington, and the criminal justice that has indicted him four times, with 91 felony charges pending in multiple trials.
He devoted more time to criticizing Haley than to praising DeSantis, casting her as a tool of the political establishment he has flouted. He made sweeping promises of peace and prosperity. And he repeated that he lost to Biden in 2020 due to fraud.
Trump noted Sunday that he won New Hampshire’s 2016 primary by about 20 points. He lost the battleground state twice in general elections.
Defamation trial
On Monday, Trump is scheduled in New York at a civil defamation trial stemming from a columnist’s claims he sexually attacked her. Then he is scheduled to return to New Hampshire for an evening rally in Laconia.
Haley will campaign across New Hampshire on Monday hoping to stall Trump’s march to the Republican presidential nomination with an upset victory in Tuesday’s statewide vote.
Haley made it clear to New Hampshire voters on Friday that she won’t serve as Trump’s vicepresident if he wins the Republican nomination, media reported.
The winner of this year’s Republican nominating contests will take on Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in November’s general election.
While the Republican rivals campaign in New Hampshire, Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris will kick off a series of events intended to highlight Republicanbacked limits on abortion that Democrats generally oppose.
Harris is being promoted by the Biden campaign as the face of the reproductive rights issue.
Harris will travel to Wisconsin to launch a nationwide tour on Monday, the 51st anniversary of the historic Roe vs Wade court decision legalizing abortion, until the US Supreme Court reversed it in 2022.