The former US president has crushed his last-remaining Republican challenger for the 2024 election
Former US President Donald Trump in Columbia, South Carolina on February 24, 2024. © Timothy A. Clary / AFP
Donald Trump has won the South Carolina Republican primary, comfortably defeating the state’s former governor Nikki Haley, according to projections by multiple news agencies.
Trump is leading with 60.1% of the votes with 60% of the ballots counted, according to the New York Times.
The 45th president’s victory was expected, as he has remained the frontrunner to be nominated by Republicans to challenge Joe Biden, whose time in office he portrayed as disastrous for the country.
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier that day, Trump attacked Biden’s mental state and his record as president, arguing that American institutions would “collapse” should he get a second term. He predicted that the “hordes of illegal aliens” would continue to cross the border with Mexico under Biden’s watch.
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Haley became the only high-profile Republican rival to Trump after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race last month. She described Trump’s presidency as “chaotic” and accused him of being “toxic” and “lacking “moral clarity.”
CNN reported earlier this week that Biden had instructed his staffers to focus on Trump’s more divisive and “inflammatory” statements in an effort to reshape his own campaign.
“Donald Trump is the polar opposite of everything President Biden stands for and has accomplished since he took office, and the campaign’s top priority over the next nine months will be laying out that stark choice for voters,” Ammar Moussa, director of rapid response for the Biden campaign, told CNN.
