Republican Governor Kim Reynolds was one of only two GOP governors to endorse Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the GOP presidential candidate — before DeSantis withdrew from the race. (The other Republican Governor was Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, who like Reynolds, also switched his endorsement to Trump after DeSantis withdrew in January.)
While on the campaign trail, DeSantis said he was considering Reynolds as his pick for VP and called Donald Trump’s attack on Reynolds “totally out of hand and totally unnecessary.”
After Reynolds announced her endorsement of DeSantis, Trump said she had “gone from a popular governor to the most unpopular governor in the entire United States of America, not an easy feat.”
Desantis says he would consider asking IA Governor Kim Reynolds to be his running-mate. pic.twitter.com/4w9bKMnJ2q
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) July 15, 2023
One year later and Reynolds reports that she’s “excited” to meet with President-elect Donald Trump and added, “I stand ready to help enact his agenda of Making America Safe, Prosperous, and Great Again!”
Excited to meet with President @realDonaldTrump tonight at Mar-a-Lago. I stand ready to help enact his agenda of Making America Safe, Prosperous, and Great Again!
January 20th can’t come soon enough!
— Kim Reynolds (@KimReynoldsIA) January 9, 2025
Conservative Iowan politician Tom Hoefling, former founder and national chairman of America’s Party and the party’s 2016 presidential nominee, responded to Reynolds’s visit to Mar-a-Lago.
Note: As an independent, Hoefling was a write-in candidate in the 2024 presidential election and as a Republican ran for Governor of Iowa in 2014 — he lost to incumbent Republican Terry Branstad, Reynolds’s predecessor.
My governor, Kim Reynolds, is at Mar-A-Lago tonight, genuflecting to Donald Trump, on the eve of his sentencing for the 34 felonies of which he was unanimously convicted by a jury of his peers. And frankly, I’m angry about it. How can we let them get away with playing pretend…
— Tom Hoefling (@TomHoefling) January 10, 2025
“My governor, Kim Reynolds, is at Mar-A-Lago tonight, genuflecting to Donald Trump, on the eve of his sentencing for the 34 felonies of which he was unanimously convicted by a jury of his peers. And frankly, I’m angry about it. How can we let them get away with playing pretend like this, as if this situation is somehow normal and acceptable?”
Note: After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Hoefling denounced Trump for his alleged involvement and called on the Senate to convict the former POTUS and “block him from ever holding any public office ever again.”