Ex-DeSantis Super PAC Spokesman Declares Support for Trump

A former Donald Trump campaign adviser is once again endorsing the former president in this year’s Republican primary race after working for a Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis super PAC for the past nine months.

Trump, who is the clear front-runner for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, secured a landslide victory on Monday in the Iowa caucuses, which marked the beginning of the GOP primary season.

Steve Cortes, who joined the super PAC Never Back Down in May, resigned from his position three months ago, according to a report by The Hill. At that time, the group stated that Cortes would “continue to support Governor DeSantis in his personal capacity.”

However, on Wednesday, Cortes announced that he is now endorsing Trump, with whom he worked on both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

“I believed that Republican voters were ready for a new post-Trump chapter of the America First movement. I now believe I was wrong,” Cortes wrote in a Wednesday RealClearPolitics opinion column.

“Those of us who backed Ron DeSantis – or the other Republican candidates – should read the room. Former President Trump winnowed the field effortlessly and then crushed the remaining three candidates in Iowa. He leads in the polls everywhere else. It is time to coalesce and unite behind the clear preference of the GOP grassroots, Donald John Trump.”

Last May, Cortes used a Newsweek opinion column to state that DeSantis “represents the best possible option to win the presidency in 2024 and to govern as a highly capable, patriotic populist leader.”

Now, Cortes has reversed his position.

“It is time to unify behind former President Trump as he leads the battle against the ruling class and the oligarchs intent on destroying the American way of life,” Cortes wrote in his RealClearPolitics column.

“I implore all patriotic populists to join as I pledge to do all I can to work for Trump’s cause, just as I proudly did in 2016 and 2020.”

Cortes added that “we do not have the luxury of further internal strife, and instead must prepare for an epic battle this autumn against our opponents who are inflicting daily damage upon America.”

“We confront a perilous moment in U.S. history,” he wrote. “Our country suffers from sky-high violent crime, the ravages of an effectively open border, a subversive educational system, and the anxiety of an economy that punishes workers – all brought about, deliberately, by Joe Biden and his allies.

“At such a flashpoint in history like this one, political unity among conservatives is an imperative. A second Biden term would risk the permanent loss of our republic as we know it. Moreover, the very probable scenario of Vice President Kamala Harris taking over for a weakened Biden makes the already troubling outcomes even bleaker.”

Cortes’ daughter Kingsley Cortes Wilson, a national committeewoman with the D.C. Young Republicans, has been a vocal supporter of Trump and a critic of DeSantis throughout the primary, the Washington Examiner reported.