Chip Roy Mourns Ron DeSantis’s Demise By Blaming Rival: ‘Nikki Haley Owns the Results’ and ‘Has No Shot’

Isaac SchorrJan 22nd, 2024, 2:29 pm
 
Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis

AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty; AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), a top surrogate for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s late presidential campaign, is mourning its demise by insisting that Nikki Haley is to blame for it.

In an interview with RealClearPolitics’ Philip Wegmann, Roy asserted that the DeSantis campaign was “hanging on in the fall” until Haley launched an ad blitz against him in Iowa as she moved up in the polls.

“Nikki Haley denied the American people a head-to-head match here. I’m just going to be blunt, she did it out of hubris. It wasn’t a selfless play,” Roy told Wegmann. “She had no shot at being the nominee. She has no shot. She’s not going to win New Hampshire. She’s not going to win her home state of South Carolina. The only thing she did was to provide a foil by attracting establishment money.”

“Nikki Haley owns the results,” he concluded.

DeSantis began the race well ahead of Haley in the polls. At the beginning of the year, DeSantis was closing in on former President Donald Trump’s national lead and even finishing ahead of Trump in some state-level polls.

But support for DeSantis began to collapse after Trump was indicted for the first time in the early spring and continued to erode as Haley turned in strong debate performances and ascended in the polls throughout the fall.

On Sunday, in his video message announcing his departure from the race, DeSantis endorsed Trump — who attacked him much more frequently and personally than Haley did — over the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” declared DeSantis. “He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear — a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism — that Nikki Haley represents.”

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