Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is throwing in the towel. The Republican candidate found himself unable to stop the rise of Donald Trump and announced in a video that he was withdrawing from the presidential primaries. His name will still appear on the ballot in New Hampshire, but his campaign is now history and his political future is uncertain. Maybe I'll try again in 2028.
“Today I am interrupting my election campaign. “I am proud to have 100% fulfilled my promises and I will not stop,” he says in the video announcing his resignation. “It is now clear to me that the majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” he added.
“Trump is superior to the current incumbent Joe Biden. That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee and I will keep that pledge. “I support it because we cannot go back to the old Republican guard of yesterday,” he says.
DeSantis' withdrawal comes just two days before the New Hamshire primary in which his prospects were bleak. According to the latest poll released by CNN on Sunday, voter intent in the state was 6%, light years away from Donald Trump's 50% and Nikki Haley's 39%. In statewide polls, the Florida governor trailed Trump by about 50 points and had fallen behind the former South Carolina governor.
When DeSantis entered the campaign a year ago, he appeared as a formidable rival to Trump. Early primaries suggested he was in a good position to challenge the former president, especially after his overwhelming success in re-election as Florida governor in November 2022.
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DeSantis soon collided with reality. He got off to a bad start in the campaign with an ad plagued by technical glitches and then was unable to withstand Trump's attacks nor stand out in the debates between the candidates. He lost the Iowa caucuses by 30 percentage points to Trump, which he had promised to win and which favored him because it was a conservative and religious state, and he had no chance in New Hampshire either.
DeSantis accompanies the video of his retirement with a quote from Winston Churchill: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: what matters is the courage to carry on,” he says.
[Noticia de última hora. Habrá ampliación en breve]
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