Ron DeSantis ended his campaign to become the Republican nominee for president in an announcement posted to the social media platform X on Sunday. But history buffs may have noticed something odd about the quote that DeSantis used to sign off his campaign. Winston Churchill never actually said that.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts,” DeSantis wrote on X in a tweet paired with a 5-minute video.
But Churchill never uttered those words, according to the International Churchill Society’s website, which notes they’re very familiar with everything the British statesman said and wrote during his lifetime.
“We base this on careful research in the canon of fifty million words by and about Churchill, including all of his books, articles, speeches and papers,” the International Churchill Society explains.
Perhaps DeSantis could’ve used other Churchill quotes that historians agree the former prime minister actually said, like, “Success always demands a greater effort.” But it’s easy to see why the DeSantis campaign chose the fake quote as an inspirational message. The DeSantis campaign was often criticized by fellow conservative activists for being “too online,” which makes the choice of using a fake quote that’s popular on the internet all the more appropriate. Fake quotes from important figures like Albert Einstein, Walt Disney and Mahatma Gandhi are extremely popular online and have been for decades.
DeSantis finished a distant second to Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses and faced an uphill battle in New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Tuesday. Trump is polling at 50% among New Hampshire’s likely Republican primary voters, with former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley in second at 39%, according to the latest poll from CNN. DeSantis had just 6%.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance. They watch his presidency get stymied by relentless resistance and they see Democrats using law fair this day to attack him,” DeSantis said in his new video.
“I’ve had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of Anthony Fauci. Trump is superior to the current incumbent Joe Biden. That is clear,” DeSantis said in the video to explain his reasons for supporting Trump.
DeSantis went on to say that he doesn’t support Haley because she represents an older version of the Republican Party, an attack line that Trump has popularized.
“I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican Guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents,” DeSantis said.
X has a program of crowd-sourced fact-checking called Community Notes which allows users to flag false information and provide more context to viral tweets that are incorrect. But, as of this writing, Community Notes hasn’t noted that this quote from Churchill is fake.
“While this campaign has ended, the mission continues. Down here in Florida, we will continue to show the country how to lead. Thank you and God bless,” DeSantis said.
