Sara Palin endorses Donald Trump ahead of Iowa caucuses

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin supports Republican front-runner Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election just days ahead of Iowa caucuses.

The Tea Party sensation voiced support for the billionaire real estate mogul on Tuesday, which could boost the GOP front-runner even further in Iowa on February 1.

“I’m proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for president,” Palin said in a statement.

According to The New York Times, Palin’s support marks “the highest-profile backing for a Republican contender so far.”

The former reality TV star reacted to Palin’s support, saying, “I am greatly honored to receive Sarah’s endorsement.”

 “She is a friend, and a high-quality person whom I have great respect for. I am proud to have her support.”

Palin was also set to accompany Trump in a rally on the Iowa State University campus in Ames later Tuesday.

Like Trump, Palin has also been a reality TV star and equally capable of playing to the cameras.

The move was mostly considered as providing a stronger shield for Trump against his rival, Senator Ted Cruz.

Blow to Palin

As rumors of her support were circulating around ahead of the announcement, Cruz expressed some “love” to Palin in New Hampshire, another early-voting state.

“I love Sarah Palin,” he told reporters. “Sarah Palin is fantastic. Without her friendship and support, I wouldn’t be in the Senate today. So regardless of what Sarah decides to do in 2016, I will always remain a big, big fan of Sarah Palin.”

Palin previously supported Cruz in his Senate bid in Texas, while Palin was supported by Trump when she was considering running a presidential campaign herself.

The two also share an operative, Michael Glassner, who used to be chief of staff to Palin’s political action committee and now serves as Trump’s national political director.

Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler had said, however, that such move would be a “blow” to Palin.

“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,” Tyler said.

According to The Atlantic, Palin and Trump have a “natural affinity” that would go beyond being reality TV stars.

“There’s a natural affinity between Trump and Palin. Both are candidates who have capitalized on their ability to speak to the grievances of white, working-class Americans. They delight in inflammatory rhetoric—getting a rise out of the right people is much of the fun—and despise the press, even as their success depends in large part on managing to capture journalists’ attention. Both have a tendency to extemporize, producing sentences that are impossible to diagram and often to understand. Both have been reality-TV stars, though Trump rode his television fame to political success, while Palin rode her political success to a television contract,” it read.

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