Watch: Donald Trump ‘honoured’ by DeSantis endorsement

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Donald Trump’s campaign said he was “honoured” to be endorsed by Ron DeSantis, after the Florida governor dropped out of the Republican primary race on Sunday and admitted he did not have a “clear path forward to victory”.
In a surprise move, Mr DeSantis suspended his campaign two days before the New Hampshire primary vote, where he was expected to suffer heavy losses to both Mr Trump and Nikki Haley.
In a statement posted on X on Sunday afternoon, Mr DeSantis gave Mr Trump his endorsement for the presidency, referencing his earlier promise to support any Republican nominee in the general election.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” he said, adding that while he had “disagreements” with the former president, he was a better choice than Joe Biden.
He criticised Ms Haley, who polls show is currently in second place in the state, declaring that her “corporatism” would make her a poor president.
Mr DeSantis thanked his family and campaign staff, and repeated the themes of his campaign.
“We launched this campaign to bring accountability to government, regain sovereignty at our border and restore sanity to our society,” he said.
“We cannot succeed as a country if we allow our nation to be invaded, our currency to be debased, our cities to crumble and our kids to be indoctrinated.
“The DC elites who facilitated this mess, do not care about you, and they do not work for you.” 
Welcoming the endorsement, Mr Trump’s campaign said: “With only a few days left until President Donald J. Trump’s victory in New Hampshire, we are honored by the endorsement from Governor Ron DeSantis and so many other former presidential candidates. 
“It is now time for all Republicans to rally behind President Trump to defeat Crooked Joe Biden and end his disastrous presidency.”
Mr Trump himself added that his derogatory nickname for his rival – “Ron DeSanctimonius” – was “officially retired”.
Ms Haley said Mr DeSantis has “run a great race” and repeated her campaign message that the primary was now a contest between her and Mr Trump.
She said: “All the fellas are out, and this comes down to: What do you want? Do you want more of the same? Or do you want something different?”
Read all the updates below to see how the news unfolded 
We’re closing this blog now, but here is a reminder of what has happened this evening.
As Ron DeSantis’s presidential dream comes to an end (for now), it’s a good time to share this interview from last year, with Allister Heath.
In the piece, the Florida governor talks wokery, Disney and why Britain feels like a second home to him.
You can read it here.
Ron DeSantis was seen as a distant third-place finisher in New Hampshire even before ending his campaign today.
The Florida governor visited the state for the first time as a major 2024 primary candidate in June. After his 30-point drubbing in Iowa, where he had committed most of his time and resources, he surrendered New Hampshire before a single vote was cast. 
Mr DeSantis actually spent the weekend campaigning in South Carolina, which hosts its primary election in five weeks.
But dismal poll numbers don’t mean DeSantis had no support at all in New Hampshire. 
With him having aimed for the most conservative factions in the GOP coalition and then endorsing Donald Trump, it’s possible his formal departure adds votes to the former president’s vote totals. 
Could that be the difference between Trump managing a narrow victory over Haley or garnering a clear majority that he then uses to declare the nomination a done deal before Haley gets her home-state shot at him?
Ron DeSantis had reckoned on a Republican Party that had tired of the 77-year-old, criminally indicted Mr Trump, but it took just one state to vote in the party’s nomination contest to shatter that illusion.
He staked all on Iowa, a state where evangelical Christians decide its victors. He championed family values with his central casting wife and children in tow, and a dedication to service as he stressed his military career.
Read Rozina Sabur’s take on how the Florida governor went from chief Trump challenger to yesterday’s man in one vote.
Bob Good, the chairman of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus, has issued a statement endorsing Donald Trump just minutes after Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign.
I want to thank Ron DeSantis for the outstanding campaign that he ran, and for being such a tremendous conservative leader. We all owe him our appreciation for putting the country first, and recognizing that it is time to rally behind President Trump as our 2024 nominee.
Here’s a video from the campaign trail in New Hampshire, where Donald Trump tells a reporter he will no longer call Ron DeSantis by his favourite nickname – “Ron DeSanctimonius”.
NEW – Trump says Ron DeSantis’ nickname “is officially retired.” pic.twitter.com/OjvNfnRgw1
In his only direct reaction to the news – other than a statement from his campaign – Donald Trump has posted a poll showing he would be more likely to beat Joe Biden in a head-to-head race.
The graphic is designed to dispel one of Mr Haley’s main campaign lines – that she would beat Mr Biden by a landslide, while Mr Trump and Mr Biden are even and “within the margin of error”.
 
Here is the full statement released by the Trump campaign just now:
“With only a few days left until President Donald J. Trump’s victory in New Hampshire, we are honoured by the endorsement from Governor Ron DeSantis and so many other former presidential candidates. It is now time for all Republicans to rally behind President Trump to defeat Crooked Joe Biden and end his disastrous presidency.
“Nikki Haley is the candidate of the globalists and Democrats who will do everything to stop the America First movement. From higher taxes, to decimating Social Security and Medicare, and to open borders, she represents the views of Democrats more than the views of Republicans. 
“It’s time to choose wisely.”
Nikki Haley has said Ron DeSantis “ran a great race” as she told a crowd in New Hampshire: “There’s now one fella, and one lady left”.
Speaking to supporters on a campaign stop, she said: “He ran a great race, he was a good governor, and we wish him well.
“Having said that, there were fourteen people in this race. There were a lot of fellas. 
“All the fellas are out, and this comes down to: What do you want? Do you want more of the same? Or do you want something different?”
The Trump campaign swiftly turned its fire onto Nikki Haley and what it described as her “dopy chief surrogate”, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, writes David Millward.
“If Nikki Haley loses in New Hampshire – there are only two options,” the campaign said in an email to supporters.
“Option A:  Nikki Haley drops out, unites behind President Trump, and commits to defeating Joe Biden (where, in the latest Harvard-Harris poll, Trump bests Biden by double the margin a now-fictional Haley vs. Biden match-up would be).
“Option B:  Nikki Haley prepares to be absolutely DEMOLISHED and EMBARASSED in her home state of South Carolina after she gets zippo votes or delegates in Nevada, because Haley entered the Nevada Primary, rather than the Nevada Caucus, where 100% of the state’s delegates are actually awarded.” 
Never Back Down – the Super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid – has released a statement on his withdrawal from the race.
Like him, they note that he had promised to support the successful Republican nominee, and appear to suggest this is the only reason he is now backing Donald Trump.
The group also refers to Mr DeSantis as “THE conservative candidate”, in a swipe at the former president.
Ron DeSantis continues to do for Republicans across America what he has done for everyone in Florida – keep his promises.Governor DeSantis kept every promise he made to Florida voters, and as THE conservative candidate for President, he promised to support the #GOP nominee.… https://t.co/IHrooB6ikG
It is “kind of amazing how poorly” the DeSantis 2024 campaign went, Christopher Galdieri, professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, told my colleague David Millward.
“He spent from the start of Covid into his second term as the one true Trump alternative, he would offer everything people liked about Trump without the chaos, but it just didn’t come together.
“A lot of the hard core culture war stuff  he was doing was not appealing to mainstream Americans. It gave Trump the opportunity to appear more  reasonable.”
This afternoon’s video on X came with a short message from the Florida governor, apparently quoting Winston Churchill.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” he wrote.
While the campaign is obviously not continuing, the quote may be a nod at a possible run for Mr DeSantis in the 2028 presidential race. 
There are already Republican strategists who believe he wasted his campaign this time, and should have waited until Donald Trump was out of the frame.
Alas, the quote appears to be apocryphal. The International Churchill Society says on its website that the former prime minister never said those words, after “careful research in the canon of fifty million words by and about Churchill, including all of his books, articles, speeches and papers”.
The surprise exit of Ron DeSantis, two days before the Republican primary, is a boost for Nikki Haley.
For days she has been telling audiences that the primary is a “two-horse race” between her and Donald Trump – but now that is actually true.
However, there is unlikely to be much crossover between her supporters and his, and this result is more likely to entrench Mr Trump’s lead even further.
The battle for her campaign will now be to convince Trump sceptics in the Republican Party, and maybe even some of his supporters, that she would do a better job.
Ron DeSantis had become known for his love of aggressive slogans about woke culture and the Washington elite, and his video withdrawing from the Republican primary race provided a few more of them.
He took some time to tell his supporters that he was dropping out – first delivering a short speech about what he believed he achieved and the purpose of his campaign.
“We launched this campaign to bring accountability to government, regain sovereignty at our border and restore sanity to our society,” he said.
“We cannot succeed as a country if we allow our nation to be invaded, our currency to be debased, our cities to crumble and our kids to be indoctrinated. 
“The DC elites who facilitated this mess, do not care about you, and they do not work for you,” he continued.
“They work for themselves. They seek to accumulate power at your expense, to pursue an agenda that is harmful to the American people. Citizens do not serve politicians. It is the duty of politicians to serve you.”
The latest polling from New Hampshire was not looking good for Ron DeSantis. Although he came second in Iowa — by a whisker — his campaign had dedicated almost all of its resources to the first state in the hope of gaining some momentum.
The dominance of Donald Trump in Iowa and his poor polling numbers in later states has clearly forced the Florida governor’s hand.
Here is how the polls looked as of this morning:
Here is Ron DeSantis’s full video, in which he announces he is withdrawing from the Republican primary race.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”- Winston Churchill pic.twitter.com/ECoR8YeiMm
Ron DeSantis’s statement supporting Donald Trump is hardly a ringing endorsement of his old rival.
“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,” he said. 
“I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee and I will honour 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.
“The days of putting Americans last, of kowtowing to large corporations, of caving to woke ideology, are over.”
The first sign that Mr DeSantis was planning to withdraw came on Saturday night, when he cancelled two scheduled media interviews on CNN and NBC, while Never Back Down, his Super PAC, cancelled events in New Hampshire, citing scheduling issues.
Mr Trump’s campaign seized on the apparent turmoil in Mr DeSantis’s camp, with staff posting online that the “end is near”.
Mr DeSantis’s decision came as polls showed he was expected to receive around six per cent of votes in the New Hampshire primary, where Mr Trump and Ms Haley are competing for first place.
His campaign has suffered in recent days following a disappointing performance in the Iowa caucuses last Tuesday, where he secured 21 per cent of the vote and only narrowly beat Ms Haley.
Mr DeSantis had poured significant resources into Iowa, hoping to be in contention to win the vote or close that gap between himself and Mr Trump, who won a landslide.
Ron DeSantis has withdrawn from the Republican primary race, leaving just Donald Trump and Nikki Haley battling for the nomination ahead of New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday.
The Florida governor said he did not have “a clear path to victory” and was suspending his campaign to endorse Donald Trump.
In a video posted on X, he said that while he had “had disagreements with Donald Trump”, he was “superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden”.
“He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear,” he said.
“Following our second place finish in Iowa, we’ve prayed and deliberated on the way forward,” he said.
“If there was anything I could do to produce a more favourable 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 now suspending my campaign.”

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