Ron DeSantis ended his campaign to become the Republican Party’s presidential candidate using a false statement attributed to British wartime leader Winston Churchill.
The governor of Florida closed his campaign with the quote: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” under the video in which he announced that he would take himself out of the running.
But the motivating words he attributed to Churchill were never actually used by the statesman and former Prime Minister of Great Britain, according to history experts.
The International Churchill Society website states: ‘We base this on careful research into the canon of fifty million words by and about Churchill, including all his books, articles, speeches and papers.
The governor of Florida closed his campaign with the quote: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” under the video in which he announced that he would take himself out of the running.
‘We can find no attribution for either of them, and you will find that they are broadly attributed to Winston Churchill. They are nowhere to be found in his canon.
“A nearly equal number of sources found online attribute these statements to Abraham Lincoln, but we found none that provide any attribution in the Lincoln Archives.”
Author Richard Langworth, who wrote eleven books about Churchill and his life, also found no source for the quote.
DeSantis, widely considered the future of the Republican Party and initially the favorite to take down Trump, announced in a surprise video on Sunday afternoon that he would suspend his campaign.
It followed mounting speculation that donors were fleeing and that his campaign was struggling to find a way to make a dent in Trump’s huge lead in the polls.
Trump said he was “honored” by DeSantis’ support and called on Republicans to rally behind the former president’s bid for the White House in 2024.
Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader, never said the words DeSantis attributed to him, experts say
DeSantis came in second in the Iowa caucuses and largely avoided campaigning in New Hampshire so he could focus on South Carolina — 2024 candidate Nikki Haley’s home state.
But the writing was on the wall as the campaign laid off half its staff, its backers grew increasingly frustrated with its war on “woke” and its top executives were at each other’s throats.
His final warning was to Republicans not to “go back to the past” and confirmed that he would support Trump, the opponent who has mocked and humiliated him over the past year.
“We don’t have a clear path to victory,” DeSantis said in the video posted to X announcing his departure from the race. “Accordingly, I am suspending my campaign today.”
Now the Republican primaries are a two-way race, with only former President Trump and his former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley vying for the nomination.
DeSantis’ launched his campaign at a disastrous Twitter Spaces event before CEO Elon Musk renamed the website X
The announcement of the end of his campaign was filmed in Florida, where it is now known he returned after holding his final campaign event of 2024 in South Carolina on Saturday.
DeSantis’ campaign vehemently denied to DailyMail.com on Sunday that he planned to drop out, but just hours later the governor released a video about X ending his bid.
“No one worked harder, and we left it all on the field,” DeSantis said in a four-and-a-half-minute video as he left the campaign.
“Now that we have finished in second place in Iowa, we have been praying and discussing the path forward.
“If there was anything I could do to achieve a favorable outcome, more campaign stops, more interviews, I would do it.
“But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources.”
The end of DeSantis’ 2024 hopes ended much as they began: on X.
DeSantis launched his campaign at a disastrous Twitter Spaces event before CEO Elon Musk renamed the website X.
Instead of kicking off with the expected ‘historic’ social media announcement, the app encountered a series of issues that prevented the event from kicking off.