It’s official: Sarah Palin is endorsing Donald Trump for president in 2016. The former governor of Alaska released a statement to the New York Times on Tuesday, January 19, after campaign officials confirmed the news.
“I’m proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president,” Palin said in the statement. The 2008 vice presidential nominee is scheduled to formally announce her endorsement during an event in Ames, Iowa, Tuesday evening.
“I am greatly honored to receive Sarah’s endorsement,” Trump, the current GOP frontrunner, said in a statement to the Times. “She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support.”
Others aren’t as thrilled about the news.
Fellow presidential hopeful Ted Cruz’s spokesperson Rick Tyler, for one, slammed the endorsement.
“I think it’d be a blow to Sarah Palin, because Sarah Palin has been a champion for the conservative cause, and if she was going to endorse Donald Trump, sadly, she would be endorsing someone who’s held progressive views all their life on the sanctity of life, on marriage, on partial-birth abortion,” Tyler said on CNN’s New Day on Tuesday.
Palin has previously expressed her interest in serving as Secretary of Energy for Trump, telling CNN last September that “energy is my baby.”
The 11 other GOP presidential hopefuls include Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Jim Gilmore.
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