Billionaire donor Ken Griffin said to be reconsidering support for DeSantis 

A billionaire Republican donor who previously announced plans to support Ron DeSantis in his presidential bid is reportedly growing impatient with Florida’s struggling primary.

Ken Griffin, founder of Miami-based hedge fund Citadel, is frustrated with DeSantis’ lack of progress in the GOP primary race and has “hit the pause button” on his support. ABC news reported Thursday, citing a person familiar with Griffin’s thinking.

However, Griffin’s spokesperson rejected the claim, telling DailyMail.com, “Ken is not interrupting anything. He continues to judge the field.’

A DeSantis spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday night.

Before DeSantis officially announced his candidacy in May, Griffin was widely expected to be one of his top backers after donating $5 million toward his 2022 gubernatorial re-election campaign in Florida.

DeSantis was spotted last week at a Fourth of July parade in New Hampshire. He has said he plans to focus on building support in key early primary states

Griffin, a mega-donor who donated $71 million to Republican federal campaigns in the 2022 midterm elections, backed DeSantis as late as last November when he told Politics he was willing to support the governor in a White House bid.

“He has a great record as governor of Florida, and our country would have been well served by him as president,” Griffin said of DeSantis at the time.

Since then, however, Griffin’s intentions in the GOP primaries have become murkier.

In April the New York Times reported that the hedge funder was troubled by comments DeSantis made about the war in Ukraine after he said it was a “territorial dispute” not vital to US interests — comments the nominee later tried to clarify.

In May, Griffin publicly broke with DeSantis over the governor’s expansion of his so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida.

The law, which previously banned classroom teaching about gender identity and sexuality below fourth grade, was expanded to ban such content in all grades, including high school.

In a statement to the Harvard Crimson student newspaper, Griffin’s spokesperson said that while he agreed with the original law, “as a steadfast advocate of open discourse, academic freedom and freedom of expression” he disagreed with extending the ban to all classes.

Griffin is a Harvard University graduate and a major donor to the school, where his ties to DeSantis have caused an uproar from some students.

Trump spoke at a campaign event in Council Bluffs, Iowa, last week. He remains the frontrunner in the GOP presidential primaries, according to national polls

According to sources cited in the recent ABC News report, Griffin has grown impatient as he waits for DeSantis to make progress as a presidential candidate.

The outlet reported that other GOP donors have begun privately questioning DeSantis’s viability while Trump remains a candidate, and discussed withholding contributions until 2028, or until Trump is no longer a factor in the race.

DeSantis continues to trail the GOP’s leading frontrunner, Donald Trump, in the polls, with the latest FiveThirtyEight poll average shows Trump with 49.7 percent support, up to 21 percent for DeSantis.

Former Vice President Mike Pence tied for third with 7.4 percent, with the other members of the overcrowded field all below the polls.

Having pulled in an impressive $20 million in campaign contributions in the first few weeks of his campaign, DeSantis is catching up with Trump, who launched his bid last fall and has a significant fundraising lead.

As the Florida governor struggles to make headway against Trump, his campaign team is considering shaking up his media strategy by appearing more on mainstream news networks, according to sources quoted by ABC News.

So far, DeSantis has largely shunned mainstream or left-leaning news outlets, sticking mostly to friendly interviews with Fox News and conservative talk shows and podcasts.

Republican presidential nominee, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, accompanied by his wife Casey and their children, walks in a Fourth of July parade

The strategy has not escaped Trump, and the former president has lashed out at his main challenger for avoiding tougher interviews.

For his part, DeSantis has called national mainstream outlets hostile to his campaign, saying his focus is currently on building local support in key early primary states.

“The business press in this country doesn’t want me to be the Republican nominee because they know I’ll beat the Democrats, I’ll beat Biden. But more importantly, they know that I can really get all these things done,” he told radio host Howie Carr on Wednesday.

He continued, “We don’t have national primaries. We have a state-by-state process, so what we’ve been focusing on is getting a foothold in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina.”