Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has ended his Republican United States presidential campaign just before the New Hampshire primary and endorsed Donald Trump, after failing to emerge as a serious challenger for the White House against the 77-year-old former president.
DeSantis’s decision comes less than two days before the New Hampshire primary, in which polls showed him far behind frontrunner Trump and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” the 45-year-old said in a video posted on X on Sunday.
In the video, DeSantis went on to attack Haley, long his closest rival for second place in the primary race, saying Republicans “can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents”.
At a Sunday evening rally in Rochester, New Hampshire, Trump set aside months of criticism and mockery of DeSantis to praise the governor, saying he was looking forward to working together to defeat President Joe Biden, the probable Democratic nominee.
When DeSantis entered the 2024 presidential contest, early primary polls suggested he was in a strong position to beat Trump, who faces multiple court cases.
Credit: aljazeera.com
