Ron DeSantis drops out of presidential sweepstakes and endorses Donald Trump

Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis announced today he is end­ing his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign and endors­ing Don­ald Trump for the 2024 nomination.

In an online video, DeSan­tis awk­ward­ly con­firmed spec­u­la­tion he’s call­ing it quits after his much-hyped but extreme­ly inef­fec­tive cam­paign flamed out in Iowa.

“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,” DeSan­tis said.

Mim­ic­k­ing Vivek Ramaswamy, DeSan­tis then offered a very swift endorse­ment of Don­ald Trump. “While I’ve had dis­agree­ments with Don­ald Trump, such as on the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and his ele­va­tion of Antho­ny Fau­ci, Trump is supe­ri­or to the cur­rent incum­bent Joe Biden. That is clear,” DeSan­tis commented.

Though Trump is not yet the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee, DeSan­tis nev­er­the­less referred to him as such while knock­ing Nik­ki Haley: “I signed a pledge to sup­port the Repub­li­can nom­i­nee and I will hon­or that pledge. He has my endorse­ment, because we can’t go back to the old Repub­li­can guard of yes­ter­year or repack­aged form of warmed-over cor­po­ratism that Nik­ki Haley represents.”

DeSan­tis released his video along­side a quote attrib­uted to Win­ston Churchill (“Suc­cess is not final, fail­ure is not fatal: it is the courage to con­tin­ue that counts.”)

The Inter­na­tion­al Churchill Soci­ety, how­ev­er, con­clud­ed after exhaus­tive research that Churchill nev­er said those words. How fit­ting that DeSan­tis used a fake quote to accom­pa­ny the end of his divi­sive, pathet­i­cal­ly futile pres­i­den­tial campaign.

DeSan­tis’ embrace of Trump ful­fills a pre­dic­tion made by Cal­i­for­nia Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som back in Novem­ber, weeks before the Iowa cau­cus­es. New­som, who went on Rupert Mur­doch’s FNC to debate DeSan­tis with right wing host Sean Han­ni­ty as mod­er­a­tor, told the Florid­i­an to his face that he would be endors­ing Trump with­in a mat­ter of weeks. And that is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened today.

Watch the clip:

“Fire sale on all Ron DeSan­tis merch today!” New­som jeered after DeSan­tis’ cam­paign released DeSan­tis’ exit video. (DeSan­tis’ online store is still up.)

It was only a week ago that DeSan­tis said: “You can be the most worth­less Repub­li­can in Amer­i­ca, if you kiss the ring, Trump will say you are won­der­ful… You know what? You deserve a nom­i­nee that will put you first, not him­self first.”

Only a few hun­dred hours lat­er, DeSan­tis kissed the ring.

The New York Times assigned not one, not two, not three, but four reporters, writ­ing from New Hamp­shire, to chron­i­cle the end of DeSan­tis’ campaign. 

Via a top-of-the-fold sto­ry, the quar­tet reflect­ed: “In throw­ing his sup­port to Mr. Trump, Mr. DeSan­tis seemed to be try­ing to unite the con­ser­v­a­tive wing of the par­ty behind the for­mer pres­i­dent while ignor­ing the fact that he was bend­ing the knee to a man who had ridiculed him as if it were a blood sport.”

While nation­al polit­i­cal reporters worked on sum­ma­riz­ing DeSan­tis’ dis­as­trous cam­paign from start to fin­ish, crit­ics were glee­ful­ly roast­ing him on social plat­forms after watch­ing his with­draw­al announce­ment and Trump endorsement.

“DeSan­tis’s implo­sion is more con­fir­ma­tion that anti-woke pol­i­tics has com­plete­ly fiz­zled,” not­ed Greg Sar­gent. “DeSan­tis orga­nized his entire gov­er­nor­ship *and* cam­paign on this theme. Now Moms for Lib­er­ty is los­ing every­where, Youngkin failed dis­as­trous­ly, and ‘where woke goes to die’ Ron is kaput.”

“Ron DeSan­tis spent $150 mil­lion ($20 mil­lion RDS and $130 mil­lion Nev­er Back Down) and only got 23,420 votes $6,400 per vote — a record of fail­ure by a fac­tor of 10x (Michael Bloomberg only spent like $450 per vote),” observed Doug Landry. “The biggest dump­ster fire in the his­to­ry of pres­i­den­tial politics.”

The New York Times Pitch­bot served up a delight­ful com­pi­la­tion of awful pro-DeSan­tis takes from the past two plus years. Among the pieces fea­tured were:

Dis­miss Ron DeSan­tis at Your Per­il (Frank Bruni col­umn for The New York Times, Feb­ru­ary 16th, 2023)

How Ron DeSan­tis won the pan­dem­ic (Michael Kruse col­umn for Politi­co, Sep­tem­ber 18th, 2021)

Is Ron DeSan­tis the Future of the Repub­li­can Par­ty? (Matt Fle­gen­heimer col­umn for The New York Times, Sep­tem­ber 13th, 2022)

Ron DeSan­tis is Don­ald Trump with brains and with­out the dra­ma (Joshua Chaf­fin col­umn for the The Finan­cial Times, Octo­ber 19th, 2022)

“I ran for pres­i­dent and all I got was this lousy par­tic­i­pa­tion tro­phy,” added The Good Liars (a mem­ber of whom actu­al­ly was able to get right up to DeSan­tis and offer him the tro­phy, which DeSan­tis declined to accept.)

“Ron DeSan­tis should be forced to car­ry his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign to term,” quipped San­ti­a­go May­er, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Vot­ers of Tomorrow.

Paul Krug­man had a more sober obser­va­tion. “Although we’re all mak­ing fun of DeSan­tis’s humil­i­a­tion, we should­n’t for­get that his anti-vax cru­sade — in ser­vice of his doomed run — prob­a­bly killed thou­sands of peo­ple,” Krug­man tweet­ed.

“We need an inves­ti­ga­tion on how Florida’s tax­pay­er resources were mis­used on the DeSan­tis cam­paign,” argued Thomas Kennedy, cit­ing this NBC report­ing. “He had tax­pay­er fund­ed offi­cial staff shak­ing down dona­tions from lob­by­ists with the impli­ca­tion their projects would be vetoed if they didn’t contribute.”

“Ron DeSan­tis pinned his entire campaign’s hopes on the same extreme MAGA agen­da that both Don­ald Trump and Nik­ki Haley are still run­ning on, and now he is the lat­est mem­ber of the GOP to fall in line behind the orig­i­nal MAGA brand,” said DNC Nation­al Press Sec­re­tary Sara­fi­na Chi­ti­ka in a statement.

“Just like Trump, DeSan­tis ran a cam­paign pledg­ing to ban abor­tion nation­wide, rip away access to health care, and gut Social Secu­ri­ty and Medicare, while embrac­ing elec­tion deniers and white­wash­ing Jan­u­ary 6th. Whichev­er can­di­date wins the race for the MAGA base will be left run­ning on the same dan­ger­ous and unpop­u­lar anti-free­dom agen­da that vot­ers will reject in November.”