Kellyanne Conway, the former Senior Counselor to President Trump, has urged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to withdraw from the Republican presidential race and rally behind Trump.
Conway made this recommendation during her appearance on "The Brian Kilmeade Show" on Fox News Radio on Tuesday. This advice comes in the wake of the Iowa caucuses, where DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley trailed significantly behind Trump, who secured a resounding victory.
Conway remarked, "I think [Trump] changed the way campaigning happens in Iowa as well. Sure, we love retail politicking, I'm a pollster of decades, I love getting with the people. But he had the fewest number of stops here in Iowa, about 25 events, where Vivek Ramaswamy had 10 times that. Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis certainly had a lot of events. Nikki Haley had all the king's horses, all the king's men when it came to that last minute infusion of cash; the ads were nonstop. The vaunted ground game for Ron DeSantis, I think, helped him squeak out the second-place finish. But it's so distant from Trump. I think Trump has all the top spots here."
She further advised DeSantis, "If I were Ron DeSantis, I would graciously drop out and say, I am a 45-year-old young man in politics, successful governor of the third-largest state. I'm going to help Trump win, and I'm going to help him beat Joe Biden, and then we'll see what the future brings. I think he should go the way of Vivek that would be my advice. I think they're all sticking around in case Trump isn't the nominee for some reason."
Conway also commented on Haley's assertion that the race was between two people, stating, "She's right. It is a two-person race, but it's between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. And she cannot win the path to the Republican nomination. She cannot go through Democrat and independent voters. It just doesn't work that way. And as a Republican, as a conservative, I shouldn't want it to work that way."
She emphasized the need for the party to continue expanding in the direction Trump has taken it, stating, "We want to make sure that the way the party is expanding now, where all the articles and the polling show President Trump is doing better among Hispanics, among African-Americans, among union households, among self-identified independents, among first time voters, and even among some young people and some groups of women than he has in the past, and that Republicans have in a while. Nobody wants to revert to the Romney-McCain model. It's a losing model, and it suggests that you're "electable." Donald Trump completely blew electability out of the water the way he did in 2016. I'd say the word around Donald Trump now is not electability. It's "inevitability.""
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