Trump Backer Explains Turning Away from DeSantis: ‘They Don’t Feel He Is Ready for It’

Don Tapia, a Trump-backer who served as U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica under former President Donald Trump, is making it crystal clear that his allegiance is behind the former president rather than Gov. Ron DeSantis, explaining why other major donors are turned off by the Florida governor well over five months into his presidential bid.

In February, Politico described Tapia as one of many “defectors” who was leaving Trump for DeSantis. At the time, the outlet reported that he “gave more than $50,000 to DeSantis’ reelection bid and hosted a pair of fundraisers for him” and asserted that donors were growing “tired of Trump’s attacks on DeSantis.”

“The name-calling has turned a lot of people off,” he said at the time. “Let me tell you, we don’t like that.”

While Politico reported that Tapia “said that he had decided to back DeSantis should he run in 2024,” Tapia made it clear to the Messenger that he never formally endorsed DeSantis and is now fully behind Trump, as he was in the past, contributing six-figures in Trump’s past campaigns.

Further, he told the outlet that more “big number guys” are coming out to support Trump as the primary goes on and the former president maintains his status as the runaway frontrunner.

“When it comes DeSantis, they don’t feel DeSantis is ready for it, that he’s up to the challenge of what is taking place. And keep in mind, the world situation has changed,” he told the outlet, noting that Trump’s indictments “brought more people home” as well.

Via the Messenger:

Tapia made those remarks just before DeSantis held a giant donor conference in Trump’s hometown of Palm Beach. But the former ambassador told The Messenger that he never technically endorsed the governor – despite the media reports – and now he’s prepared to cut a “half million to a million” check to the former president’s MAGA Inc. super PAC to make his allegiance clear.

Tapia is far from the only megadonor going back to Trump. As Breitbart News reported last week, Republican megadonor Robert Bigelow — who once held the status of the biggest individual donor supporting DeSantis’s presidential campaign — now identifies as “pro-Trump.”

“I’m pro-Trump. Right now, I’m determined to remain on the sidelines for the time being to see how these prosecutions play out,” he said. “I have to be sure that he does not have a position where the prosecution has a path to send him to jail.”

“He’s got to stay out of jail. You can’t run the United States from jail,” he told Reuters, expressing the belief that the targeting of Trump is political in nature.

The switches back to Trump have been a long time coming, as the trend largely began over the summer.

As Breitbart News reported in July:

Republican megadonor Ken Griffin is also reconsidering his support for DeSantis after previously claiming, “our country would be well-served by him as president,” months before DeSantis launched his campaign.

Griffin is one of several donors who supported DeSantis’s gubernatorial campaigns but are shying away from contributing to his presidential campaign. Former Marvel chairman Ike Perlmutter — who donated, with his wife, over $2 million to DeSantis’s gubernatorial reelection campaign — is planning to support Trump’s third White House bid with a “meaningful” contribution, CNBC reported.

Billionaire Ronald Lauder, who donated more than $200,000 to DeSantis’s gubernatorial campaigns, is now considering throwing his financial support to Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), Politico reported.

These rumblings prompted the DeSantis campaign to release a confidential memo, which was ultimately leaked, designed to reassure donors in July. However, his strategy — of focusing on early primary states rather than Super Tuesday states — has failed to materialize in the polls, as he is down double digits to Trump and even falling behind Nikki Haley in states such as South Carolina and New Hampshire.