They may have contested issues before, but Dr. Ben Carson, a Republican presidential candidate who halted his campaign for the presidency, is foreseen to endorse his fellow candidate Donald Trump on Friday.
In a report by Washington Post, Carson met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, a high-end bar owned by the GOP front-runner on Thursday morning. This is Trump’s third Republican nod after New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Vice Presidential candidate and Alaska governor Sarah Palin endorsed the New York multimillionaire and property mogul. Trump outrageously led every GOP primary, and many political analysts predict that he will be the party’s nominee.
Carson’s announcement will take place in Palm Beach, Florida, the Post report said, quoting Carson’s business manager Armstrong Williams. Before joining the presidential race, Carson was a famed neurosurgeon and novelist, and his endorsement of Trump would boost Trump’s support base from evangelicals.
Despite Trump’s heated arguments with Carson during the first few weeks of the campaign, the report said that Carson saw Trump’s easy victory in every primary, and that this would result in the GOP’s future win in the elections.
In an interview on Fox Radio, Carson respectfully spoke of Trump. “There’s two Donald Trumps. There’s the Donald Trump that you see on television and who gets out in front of big audiences, and there’s the Donald Trump behind the scenes,” Carson said in the interview.
Carson dropped his presidential bid this month in a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, after rapidly losing votes in most Republican primaries across the country. Since then, he is quietly residing in his home in West Palm Beach.
Other celebrities and reputable figures also endorsed Trump, such as former President Jimmy Carter and evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.
On the other hand, some personalities have scored Trump over his hard-line stances on controversial issues such as immigration and healthcare. One of them is former Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who implored that Trump is a ‘phony and a fraud’, in spite of Trump’s endorsement of him when he was running for the same position in 2012.
Florida senator Marco Rubio and Texas senator Ted Cruz lambasted Trump over his scandals, including a lawsuit on now-defunct Trump University and the issue of illegal Polish workers working for Trump.