Election 2024 DeSantis Drops Out of Presidential Race and Endorses Trump

“Ron DeSantis’s distant loss to Donald J. Trump in Iowa dealt a devastating blow to his campaign. His exit caps a spectacular political failure and leaves Mr. Trump and Nikki Haley locked in a two-person contest.

Updated 

Jan. 21, 2024, 3:48 p.m. ETJust now

1. Ron DeSantis

   @RonDeSantis via X

2. 

   Epping, N.H.

   Nikki Haley made an appearance at the Beach Plum restaurant.

   Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

3. Manchester, N.H.

   Sophie Park for The New York Times

4. Nikki Haley in Derry, N.H., on Sunday.

   Associated Press

5. Manchester

   Donald J. Trump supporters at a rally in Saturday.

   Doug Mills/The New York Times

6. Concord, N.H.

   Donald J. Trump supporters at a rally on Friday.

   Doug Mills/The New York Times

7. Lexington, S.C.

   Voters at a Ron DeSantis campaign stop on Saturday.

   Nicole Craine for The New York Times

8. Myrtle Beach, S.C.

   Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a campaign rally.

   Nicole Craine for The New York Times

Pinned

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida suspended his campaign for president on Sunday and endorsed the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, as the primary race in New Hampshire enters its final 48 hours.

The move cements the Republican contest as a two-person race between Mr. Trump and former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, a little less than a week after Mr. DeSantis’s devastating 30-percentage-point loss to Mr. Trump in Iowa.

Jan. 21, 2024, 3:48 p.m. ETJust now

One critical date remains for the DeSantis candidacy: Jan. 31.That’s the deadline for Super PACs and campaigns to file their end-of-2023 financial reports with federal officials. Then we will see how much money Never Back Down and the DeSantis campaign burned through.

Jan. 21, 2024, 3:46 p.m. ET3 minutes ago

Nikki Haley’s news media entourage appears to be growing compared to when she arrived in New Hampshire less than a week ago from Iowa. At the Beach Plum restaurant in Epping, N.H., her aides herded reporters in one direction, while aides to Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire pointed the opposite way. 

Jan. 21, 2024, 3:47 p.m. ET2 minutes ago

Some people in New Hampshire don’t appear to be easily impressed, like a man who was eating with his back to Nikki Haley as she did a television interview. He barely batted an eyelash as he sipped on his soft drink and ate fried seafood. 

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Why I’m Voting: A Fisherman Urges Republicans to Confront Climate Change

Peter Whelan is a lifelong conservative from Portsmouth, N.H. He wants Republicans to respond to the warming waters that threaten the fishing industry and his livelihood.

“Politically, I’m a realist. I mean, I’m a conservative at heart. Less government is always better. That’s kind of the New Hampshire way. I’m a charter boat fisherman. I’m pretty active in the commercial fishing business here. I do a little bit of cod and haddock fishing, but primarily striped bass. Yeah, bring them up, if you can. I just love it. The fishing industry is changing a lot. It’s been changing radically the past 10 or 15 years, and a lot of it has to do with climate change and environmental issues. It’s all about warming waters. So it affects everything: fish migrations, the lobster industry, the scallop industry, which is a huge business. And we’ve just seen a massive decline in the amount of fish that are be able to catch, both commercially and recreationally.” “But that’s only about 400, maybe 500 pounds.” “OK.” “If not, then you’re good. But that’s fishing: You never know unless you go.” “I’ve been very fortunate to see Nikki Haley, both at one of her events and kind of a private meeting with other fishermen. And I really like what she said. She was a governor in South Carolina. She was very close to the shrimping industry there. But I think she understands what a fisherman does every day in and day out. So like right now, it’s 10 degrees outside here in New Hampshire. Our ocean water temperature is 42 degrees. That’s unheard-of. I’m looking at my business and saying, ‘What am I going to be fishing for in another five years?’ I mean, I’m frustrated. I mean, I try to tell people what’s going on, you know, but the hard-core conservatives and the climate deniers are people that aren’t on the water every day and seeing it. I just think the country’s going in two separate directions at the current time. And it’s just not healthy. We’re not getting anything done. We got to move the country forward.”

Peter Whelan is a lifelong conservative from Portsmouth, N.H. He wants Republicans to respond to the warming waters that threaten the fishing industry and his livelihood.Noah Throop/The New York Times

Jan. 21, 2024, 3:41 p.m. ET7 minutes ago

DeSantis’s endorsement of Trump was as quick as it was clumsy. He offered no rationale for the decision other than the former president had support from most Republicans in the polls — and that he wasn’t Nikki Haley. DeSantis also couldn’t resist taking one last shot at his party’s front-runner, recycling criticism of Trump’s handling of the pandemic and reliance on Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida suspended his campaign for president on Sunday, just two days before the New Hampshire primary election, and endorsed former President Donald J. Trump.

It marked a spectacular implosion for a candidate once seen as having the best chance to dethrone Mr. Trump as the Republican Party’s nominee in 2024. His departure from the race leaves Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, as Mr. Trump’s last rival standing. 

Jan. 21, 2024, 2:48 p.m. ET1 hour ago

When Nikki Haley was asked on Sunday whether she would explore joining a potential No Labels ticket in the November election if she fails to win the G.O.P. nomination, she shot it down immediately. “I am a Republican through and through,” she said, adding, “I’ve never been interested in that.”

Jan. 21, 2024, 2:45 p.m. ET1 hour ago

While Nikki Haley runs late at her prior campaign event in Epping, Haley supporters are packing into a creek-side lobster joint in Seabrook. Parking at the restaurant filled up early, forcing others to find it elsewhere and cross a busy state highway to get into the building. Epping is about half an hour away from Seabrook, so Haley is likely facing a significant delay in her already very packed campaign schedule.

Jan. 21, 2024, 2:35 p.m. ET1 hour ago

Nikki Haley hit back at Donald Trump and his accusations that she was compromising the integrity of New Hampshire’s Republican primary by courting independent voters, who are allowed to participate. “I passed voter ID before he even knew what a Republican was,” she told a gaggle of reporters at a restaurant in Epping, N.H. 

Jan. 21, 2024, 2:22 p.m. ET1 hour ago

Speaking to reporters in Epping, N.H., Gov. Chris Sununu dismissed a question about whether New Hampshire’s primary is make or break for Nikki Haley. “A month ago, no one said ’Nikki Haley has to win New Hampshire,'” he said, adding that the goal for her now is to build momentum ahead of South Carolina, her home state. “We want her to have strong showing, better than Iowa, and we will,” he said.

Jan. 21, 2024, 2:00 p.m. ET2 hours ago

At a campaign stop in Epping, N.H., Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire once again joined Nikki Haley. They are sequestered in a restaurant kitchen area, where a waitress just emerged with a tray of lobster rolls. They are served either cold with mayo or hot with butter.

Jan. 21, 2024, 1:55 p.m. ET2 hours ago

Sharon Tilton, 79, a retiree from Durham, N.H., shrugged when I told her that Nikki Haley is going to be making the rounds at the seafood eatery where I’m staked out. She said she voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, and plans to do the same this year. “He can run circles around her any day of the week,” she said. 

Nikki Haley, the sole presidential candidate on the Sunday morning news shows after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida canceled his planned appearances, continued her recent shift toward more direct and forceful denunciations of former President Donald J. Trump, with a focus on his mental acuity and relationship with authoritarian leaders.

“Look, I don’t know if he was confused, I don’t know what happened, but it should be enough to send us a warning sign,” Ms. Haley said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” referring to Mr. Trump’s confusing her on Friday with Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker. Mr. Trump, she added, is cognitively “just not at the same level he was at 2016.”

Jan. 21, 2024, 1:42 p.m. ET2 hours ago

I’m at Beach Plum, a lobster roll joint in Epping, N.H., where Nikki Haley’s handlers are trying to keep a media pack from overwhelming the dining area. A server is carrying fried seafood platters to diners through a labyrinth of cameras. Haley is set to arrive shortly. 

Jan. 21, 2024, 1:27 p.m. ET2 hours ago

The Biden campaign is joining Nikki Haley in piling on Donald Trump for his recent confused statements on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. Biden just put out an ad on X saying “I don’t agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi,” referencing Trump confusing the two multiple times. 

Jan. 21, 2024, 1:26 p.m. ET2 hours ago

After months of attacks from Trump labeling President Biden as senile and attacking his mental acuity, Mr. Trump's recent confused statements appear to be giving Biden an opening to hit back on the issue of age. A lot of voters have said in polls that they’re concerned about Biden’s age, more so than they are about Mr. Trump’s.

Jan. 21, 2024, 1:23 p.m. ET2 hours ago

James Rutten, 53, a Republican from Amherst, N.H., and an attorney, said that he is “struggling” over his choice in the primary, torn between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. It won’t be Donald Trump, whom he said “poisons the dialogue” and was “divisive.” 

Former President Donald J. Trump, in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News, continued to promote a racist and nativist theory that former Gov. Nikki Haley, his closest competitor in New Hampshire’s upcoming primacy, was not eligible for the presidency.

Mr. Trump was asked by the anchor Bret Baier to explain recent social media posts in which Mr. Trump has repeatedly misspelled Ms. Haley’s name, Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. In the past week, he has referred to Ms. Haley, who has long gone by her middle name, as “Nimbra” and “Nimrada.”

Jan. 21, 2024, 11:52 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Nikki Haley just made her closing argument to New Hampshire voters on national television this morning. Ron DeSantis, who was also scheduled to be on the Sunday shows, canceled his appearances, missing out on prime media real estate. His campaign blamed a scheduling change.

Jan. 21, 2024, 11:39 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Just before Nikki Haley walked onstage for an event in Derry, Gov. Chris Sununu, her chief surrogate in New Hampshire, framed her performance in the Iowa caucuses as a “strong showing,” adding that “she’s effectively knocked out all these other candidates one by one by one.” Haley finished third in Iowa behind Ron DeSantis, a weaker-than-expected performance compared to pre-caucus polling.

Jan. 21, 2024, 11:38 a.m. ET4 hours ago

Haley is attacking Trump on his age, pointing out multiple confused statements he has made on the campaign trail in New Hampshire over the last couple day: “Trump goes on and on multiple times saying that I prevented the security on January 6 at the Capitol. I wasn’t even anywhere near the Capitol! I wasn’t in office! He said it over and over again, but the reality is he was confused.”

Jan. 21, 2024, 11:38 a.m. ET4 hours ago

She continued: “He was confused the same way he said Joe Biden was going to start World War Two. He was confused the same way that he said he ran against President Obama. It was Hillary Clinton.”

Jan. 21, 2024, 11:37 a.m. ET4 hours ago

A protester just heckled Haley and was escorted out of the building, the latest in a series of increasingly frequent incidents on the campaign trail in the days leading up to the New Hampshire primary. Haley responds with a line she has used in response to hecklers: “I’m grateful for protesters like that because that’s what my husband and military men and women sacrifice for us every day.”

Jan. 21, 2024, 10:40 a.m. ET5 hours ago

In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” Quentin Fulks, President Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager, dismissed Republicans’ attacks on Biden’s age and mental acuity, which polls show voters are concerned about as well. “I’m sure it’s much easier for them to talk about age than it is to talk about the fact that they want to rip away a woman’s right to choose,” he said.

The Union Leader, New Hampshire’s largest newspaper and one that reliably picked Republicans for a century before the rise of Donald Trump, endorsed Nikki Haley on Sunday in the Republican primary.

“Of course, we can’t talk about Nikki Haley without addressing the elephant in the room and the rather old donkey hiding in the White House,” it wrote, alluding to Mr. Trump and President Biden — though making no mention of Mr. Trump by name.

President Biden’s campaign is releasing a new advertisement featuring the testimonial of a woman who was forced to leave Texas to end a planned pregnancy that put her life at risk.

In the 60-second spot, Dr. Austin Dennard, an OB-GYN and a mother of three from Texas, says she became pregnant with a baby that she “desperately wanted.” When she was 11 weeks pregnant, her fetus was diagnosed with anencephaly, a fatal condition in which a baby is born without parts of a brain and skull.

Jan. 21, 2024, 9:46 a.m. ETJan. 21, 2024

A new CNN poll of New Hampshire has Donald Trump at 50 percent, a double digit lead over Nikki Haley at 39 percent. Ron DeSantis trails badly with just 6 percent support, too low to win even a single delegate. (DeSantis led the poll in early 2023.)

Jan. 21, 2024, 9:32 a.m. ETJan. 21, 2024

Ron DeSantis will campaign in New Hampshire this afternoon, after canceling his appearances on the Sunday shows, as well as several events in South Carolina that were supposed to take place today. His chaotic schedule reflects a campaign teetering on the edge of irrelevance.

Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, a Democrat running a long-shot primary challenge to President Biden, said on Saturday that he would consider running on the ticket of No Labels, a centrist group exploring an independent bid, if it appeared the general election would be a rematch between Mr. Biden and Donald J. Trump.

In an interview, Mr. Phillips publicly articulated for the first time the circumstances in which he would accept the No Labels presidential nomination, and said he was in regular communication with Nancy Jacobson, the group’s chief executive. Democratic allies of Mr. Biden have been alarmed by No Labels, worrying that any candidate it runs could siphon votes from him.

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Nikki Haley Takes a Jab at Trump’s Age and Mental Fitness

While speaking at a rally in Peterborough, N.H., Nikki Haley criticized Donald J. Trump’s mental competency, questioning if he would be fit to lead the nation.

And are we really going to go to our kids and tell them that their options are two 80-year-olds for president? Now think about this. That’s not being disrespectful. And then you have Trump, and last night, something happened that has happened multiple times. He was on a temper tantrum about me, which is fine, he does that often. But he went on and talked about how I kept the police from going into the Capitol on January 6. Went on and repeated that I didn’t do anything to secure the Capitol. Let’s be clear. I wasn’t in the Capitol on January 6. I wasn’t in office on January 6. He mentioned it three times. He got confused. He got confused and said he was running against Obama. He never ran against Obama. Don’t put our country at risk like this.

While speaking at a rally in Peterborough, N.H., Nikki Haley criticized Donald J. Trump’s mental competency, questioning if he would be fit to lead the nation.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

Nikki Haley on Saturday escalated her attacks on Donald J. Trump, directly criticizing his mental acuity for the first time a day after the former president appeared to confuse her for Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, during his Friday night rally in New Hampshire.

In a news conference with reporters after her campaign event in Peterborough, N.H., Ms. Haley stopped short of calling Mr. Trump mentally unfit. But she did question whether he would be “on it” enough to lead the nation.“