With Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary closing in, former President Donald Trump plans to appear on the eve of the primary with three of his former GOP rivals in a united front in the Granite State.
According to Fox News Digital, the Trump campaign announced that Trump had planned a rally at 9 p.m. in Laconia, New Hampshire.
The VIP guests of the rally will be former GOP primary opponents who have now officially endorsed Trump in his quest for re-election: South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
All three were contenders in the GOP nomination race, and all of them have publicly endorsed Trump.
“This is designed as a show of force that the party is united and ready to take on Joe Biden,” a campaign official told Fox News Digital.
The official said that “all three VIP guests — former opponents, now endorsers — will be drawing a sharp contrast to Joe Biden in a preview of the general election that is now here.”
One of the biggest names to end his campaign for the presidency was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who made his announcement Sunday.
DeSantis, like his fellow GOP candidates, also threw his support behind Trump and give him his endorsement.
DeSantis said it is “clear” Republican voters “want to give Donald Trump another chance.”
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“They watched his presidency get stymied by relentless resistance, and they see Democrats using lawfare to this day to attack him,” DeSantis said.
“While I have had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of [Dr.] Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear.”
With the departure of DeSantis from the primary race, the field is narrowed to two choices for Republican and “undeclared” voters in New Hampshire: Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley.
While Haley has been seeking to forge a “middle road” strategy that tries to pull moderate Republicans in while not fully embracing the “Never Trump” movement, DeSantis gave her no safe quarter with his endorsement of Trump.
DeSantis said he would support Trump “because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear — a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism — that Nikki Haley represents.”
In a Washington Post-Monmouth University poll released Monday of potential voters in the Republican primary, Trump holds a double-digit lead over Haley, with 52 percent supporting him and 38 percent supporting Haley.
The Post report made a point of noting where each can expect the most support.
“Trump is buoyed by strong support from the party’s conservative base, while Haley has been consolidating support among moderates and independent voters who plan to participate in the GOP primary,” the newspaper reported.
“The Post-Monmouth poll finds that these undeclared voters support Haley over Trump by 10 points, 48 percent to 38 percent, an improvement for her since November. But Trump boasts a much larger 42-point lead among the 53 percent of the sample who are registered Republicans: 64 percent to 22 percent for Haley, essentially unmoved from November.”
