It was always obvious Gov. Kim Reynolds would endorse Donald Trump for president once Ron DeSantis’s floundering 2024 campaign collapsed. DeSantis gave up his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and endorsed Trump six days after his distant second-place finish in the Iowa Republican Caucus on Jan. 15.
On Wednesday, Gov. Reynolds did the obvious, endorsing Trump in posts on Facebook and Twitter, now called X.
“Joe Biden has been a disaster for the country,” the governor’s Facebook post said. “I will do everything possible to defeat him and elect Donald J. Trump for [sic] President of the United States!”
Reynolds’ endorsement tweet was one sentence longer than the Facebook post. That sentence was the standard litany of complaints Reynolds includes in news releases about the Biden administration, regardless of the reason for the news release.
Reynolds’ endorsement came the day after Trump won 14 out of 15 primary contests on Super Tuesday, and just hours after Nikki Haley, who won the Vermont Republican Primary on Tuesday, ended her campaign. Haley was the only significant competition Trump faced for the Republican nomination after DeSantis dropped out. Unlike Reynolds, Haley did not endorse Trump on Wednesday.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him,” Haley said.
Before he started ignoring Reynolds once the Iowa Caucus was over, Trump and members of his campaign staff spent months accusing the governor of being disloyal and claiming Reynolds had been lying for most of 2023 when she said was neutral in the caucus and would treat all candidates equally.
It wasn’t until two months before the caucus that Reynolds broke with tradition, discarding her official position as neutral and endorsing DeSantis in a speech at a campaign rally in Des Moines on Nov. 6.
“We need someone who won’t get distracted, but will stay disciplined, who puts this country first and not himself,” Reynolds said, clearly drawing a contrast between her chosen candidate and Trump.
The governor, however, wouldn’t go as far as actually using Trump’s name while praising DeSantis’s political courage. It was continuation of Reynolds’ passive-aggressive style of publicly disagreeing with Trump while never using his name.
During an appearance on Meet the Press in September, Trump said DeSantis had done “a terrible thing” and made “a terrible mistake” by signing a six-week abortion ban into law. Reynolds responded with a tweet from her political campaign account.
“It’s never a ‘terrible thing’ to protect innocent life,” the governor tweeted. “I’m proud of the fetal heartbeat bill the Iowa legislature passed and I signed in 2018 and again earlier this year.”
Trump was not named.
And just days before the caucus, the New York Times reported on a pseudonymous Twitter account apparently belonging to Reynolds. The Times said @Kimberl26890376 was “where in recent months [Reynolds] has shared her unfiltered feelings on the state of affairs in the Republican primary ahead of the Iowa caucuses.”
The Times may have been a little overly dramatic characterizing the tweets as “her unfiltered feelings.” Most of the account’s 58 tweets were retweets praising DeSantis or criticizing Trump. The harshest post the Times quoted was a retweet of a DeSantis supporter who wrote, “Trump has no loyalty but demands it from everyone else. That’s FEALTY. Which makes sense because these people want a king.”
Reynolds’ endorsement of Trump is unlikely to do anything to improve his opinion of her. Trump seldom forgets real or perceived slights, or actions he considers disloyal. He’s also openly contemptuous of people he considers ineffective, as Reynolds was in her attempt to secure a caucus victory for DeSantis.
Following the governor’s endorsement of DeSantis, Trump’s lead in the Iowa Poll increased. Trump ended up beating DeSantis in Iowa by 30 percentage points.
Trump will overlook past slights if he feels the person who offended him can be useful. It’s not clear how Reynolds could be useful to Trump before the November election. He already knows he doesn’t need her help to win in Iowa.
On Wednesday, Trump used his Truth Social account to respond to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor of Virginia. Both have been critical of Trump in the past, and willing to use his name when criticizing him.
“There is no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the event of that day,” McConnell said in February 2021 about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In recent years, Trump has repeatedly attacked McConnell and made racist comments about his wife, Elaine Chao.
In November 2022, Trump attacked Youngkin as disloyal, claiming Youngkin couldn’t have been elected without his help — something he’s also said about Reynolds.
“Young Kin (now that’s an interesting take. Sounds Chinese, doesn’t it?) in Virginia couldn’t have won without me,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
After the results from Super Tuesday were reported, both McConnell and Youngkin endorsed Trump. Trump used his Truth Social account on Wednesday to thank them.
So far, Trump has ignored Reynolds’ endorsement.