DeSantis and Haley Unite behind Former Rival at Convention as Trump Solidifies GOP Takeover

Milwaukee — Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley spent months sparring with Donald Trump on the 2024 GOP primary campaign trail, calling him too chaotic, unpopular, and divisive a figure to merit a second term. But as both ex-rivals tell it these days, those character and policy disagreements are all water under the bridge.

Three days after Trump survived a brush with death at a Pennsylvania campaign rally, both Haley and DeSantis lavished praise on Trump here in Milwaukee on Tuesday evening to a convention crowd that’s entirely united around the man they both challenged unsuccessfully for the 2024 nomination.

“We should acknowledge that there are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100 percent of the time. I happen to know some of them,” Haley said at the start of her speech, eliciting laughter from the crowd before urging on-the-fence voters to cast their ballots for Trump this November. “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him.”

This week’s 2024 GOP convention comes as both DeSantis and Haley are navigating their own political futures several months after suspending their presidential campaigns in January and March, respectively.

Wading through post-2024 presidential primary waters may prove slightly trickier for Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador under Trump who announced in April her new post-presidential primary campaign gig as Walter P. Stern chair at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank that shares her hawkish foreign-policy views. Leading up to the convention, Haley urged her 97 delegates to cast votes for Trump at the convention. But that came after a long and brutal primary fight that didn’t end until March and didn’t coincide with an immediate endorsement of the frontrunner.

Haley made clear she’s all in on Trump now, telling the crowd that the 2024 nominee now has her “strong” endorsement. “For the sake of our nation, we have to go with Donald Trump,” she said.

Hours before she took the stage, at least one member of her home-state delegation was dreading her speech. “Obviously it made a lot of us mad” when Haley took until after Super Tuesday to drop out of the Republican presidential primary, South Carolina delegate Manfred Lewis told National Review earlier Tuesday evening. Does Lewis think she should’ve scored a last minute invite to the convention? “No, absolutely not. Not after the way she treated Trump.”

Yet that anti-Haley sentiment was drowned out by loud cheers and standing ovations, especially from her home state delegation.

“Here’s the thing. Trump is a forgiving guy,” said South Carolina delegate Jerry Rovner, who voted for Haley for governor but supported Trump in this year’s presidential primary. He pointed to Ohio senator J. D. Vance, the formerly anti-Trump Republican who was tapped last night to serve as the former president’s 2024 running mate. “He doesn’t hold a grudge. He realizes this is politics. People say things. So I believe she’s here tonight to unite the party and make sure we get Republican elected,” he said, adding: “I honestly believe she’s here to smooth things over because she wants a job in the new administration.”

Haley and DeSantis never had the opportunity to litigate their 2024 primary disagreements onstage alongside the former president, whose advisers made the strategic decision to skip primary debates and counter-program them with town halls and rallies. Politically speaking, that move paid off tremendously in taking the spotlight away from his GOP rivals and allowing them to tear each other apart onstage in his absence. Skipping GOP primary debates also allowed Trump to set the stage for a June debate against Biden that showcased the 81-year-old incumbent’s age-related vulnerabilities and changed the trajectory of the entire general election as a result.

Biden’s age and infirmity was a major theme in DeSantis’s Tuesday evening convention remarks. “Our country was respected when Donald Trump was our commander in chief,” the Florida governor told the crowd, mocking Biden’s “Weekend at Bernie’s presidency.” He left the convention crowd by repeating the rallying cry Trump issued Saturday afternoon in Pennsylvania, narrowly escaping assassination. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” Trump yelled.

“Most relaxed I’ve ever seen him,” Florida Representative Brian Mast said of his home state governor’s onstage appearance tonight on his way out of the convention hall.

DeSantis’s unity message comes as the Florida governor keeps his eye on 2028. He’s notably taking time this week in Milwaukee to address the Republican Party of Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state where he based his primary campaign and finished a distant second behind Trump. And he’s also spent recent months making plans to fundraise for the GOP’s nominee in a sign of party unity that doubles as an opportunity to pad his own donor contact list as he mulls what’s next after his second term ends in 2026.

“That’ll be very valuable to the president, because number one, he’ll raise a bunch of money,” Roy Bailey, a national finance chairman for Trump in 2020 who served as a national finance committee chairman for DeSantis in 2024, told NR in late May. “And number two, Governor DeSantis can do that without taking Trump’s time to do it.” 

As National Review reported last week, DeSantis is scheduled to headline a fundraiser here on Wednesday for the pro-Trump Super PAC, Right for America. Dinner. Tickets cost $50,000 per person and $75,000 per couple, and all funds from the event will be used to help reelect Trump in November, a spokesman for the group confirmed.

These developments have many Florida Republicans optimistic he’ll launch a comeback presidential campaign four years from now. “It wasn’t his time yet,” Florida delegate April Culbreath told National Review on the convention floor earlier Tuesday. “He gave it a shot, he got some name recognition, and now he is building that relationship back with President Trump.”

This post has been updated.