Former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin endorsed Donald Trump for president while in Iowa on Tuesday.

"You are ready to make America great again!" she told a beaming Trump.

Palin rallied supporters, telling them that he would "kick ISIS' ass" and not "apologize" for America.

"He's going rogue left and right," she said. "That's why he's doing so well."

The New York Times first reported news of the announcement on Tuesday afternoon.

Palin is a longtime supporter of Trump, and even backed his controversial call for a "complete shutdown " of Muslims entering the United States. Back in August, Palin raved about the businessman, praising him for "crushing it in the polls ."

In July, Trump said he'd "love " having Palin work in his administration if he were elected president.

"Like me, she's got people that don't exactly love us and we understand who they are and sort of forget about that," Trump told host Kevin Scholl on "The Palin Update," an online interview show. "But she has a tremendously loyal group of people out there for her."

A spokesman for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who's coming in just behind Trump in national polls according to HuffPost Pollster , said earlier it would "be a blow to Sarah Palin" if the former Alaska governor endorsed Trump.

"If she was going to endorse Donald Trump, sadly, she would be endorsing someone whos held progressive views all their life on the sanctity of life, on marriage, on partial-birth abortion, Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said on CNN 's "New Day" Tuesday.

Palin's daughter Bristol responded to the Cruz campaign with a blog post , calling those comments a "negative knee-jerk reaction" to a rumor about whom Palin would get behind in the 2016 race.

"How rude to that hes setting up a false narrative about her!" Bristol Palin wrote, noting she hoped her mother would endorse Trump for president.

Cruz took to Twitter to clear the air on Tuesday afternoon:

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