Sarah Palin endorses Donald Trump for president
Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican nominee for vice president and Tea Party leader, announced on Tuesday her endorsement of Donald Trump for president in 2016.
"Are you ready to make America great again?" the former governor of Alaska asked in front of the packed Ames, Iowa crowd at Iowa State University.
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Palin trumpeted her support for the GOP front-runner saying, "No more p***yfooting around. Our troops deserve the best, you deserve the best." "You ready for a commander-in-chief who will let our warriors do their job and kick ISIS' a**?"
The duo have some key traits in common. Both are reality TV stars with political aspirations who believe in speaking bluntly and refuse to stay "politically correct."
See photos from her announcement:
"I am greatly honored to receive Sarah's endorsement," Trump said in a responding statement. "She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support."
The move is a political blow to one of Trump's main rivals for the Republican nomination. Palin was a strong supporter for fellow GOP rival Ted Cruz during his 2012 campaign for U.S. Senate.
Cruz's campaign launched a preemptive attack on Palin as rumors about the impending endorsement began to swirl.
"I think it [would] 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," Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler told CNN Tuesday.
Palin's daughter, Bristol, responded to that statement by lashing out at Cruz in a blog post.
"After hearing what Cruz is now saying about my mom, in a negative knee-jerk reaction, makes me hope my mom does endorse Trump. Cruz's flip-flop, turning against my mom who's done nothing but support and help him when others sure didn't, shows he's a typical politician," she wrote.
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Trump has not always been an fully devoted supporter of Palin's.
As BuzzFeed reported, Trump praised her in a 2008 blog post, but insisted that Mitt Romney would have made a better running mate for John McCain than the Alaska governor.
"Romney would have been a better choice, but she revived interest in the Republican Party," he wrote at the time.
But by 2011, Trump and Palin had nothing but praise for each other as the two embarked on a tour of Manhattan together.
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