In a hurry to project himself into a duel with Biden, Donald Trump on Saturday inflicted a defeat on his last Republican rival, Nikki Haley, during the South Carolina primary.
The setback is all the more scathing for the fifty-year-old, embodying a more moderate wing of the Republican Party, as it takes place in the state of which she was governor for six years.
But as in the four other previous elections, the aim of which is to nominate the Republican candidate for the presidential election in November, the former American president was merciless.
Donald Trump’s victory was projected by the American media just a few seconds after the polling stations closed.
Despite his legal troubles, some of which put him at risk of prison, the tempestuous septuagenarian is the ultra-favorite candidate of the right, according to all the polls.
The stakes of this primary were clear.
“If Trump is able to beat former Governor Nikki Haley in his home state, that would likely make him a near-guaranteed candidate for the Republican Party nomination,” said David Darmofal, a political scientist at the University of Carolina. from the South, to AFP.
“Defeat Crackle Joe”
Donald Trump now hopes to force his former ambassador to the UN to throw in the towel in order to be able to focus his attacks on Democrat Joe Biden, who is seeking a second term in November.
“The primary ends tonight and it’s time to turn to the presidential election so we can defeat Joe-the-Scrap,” Steven Cheung, Donald Trump’s spokesperson, said in a statement, using one of the the tycoon’s favorite nicknames for the democrat.
But Nikki Haley, 52, is hanging on: she is refusing for the moment to leave the race for the Republican nomination.
The plea of this woman, the only one in the running among the Republicans, is simple: “We will not survive four more years of Trump’s chaos. »
She urges them to choose “a new generation of conservative leaders” instead.
Taking advantage of new controversial comments from her rival, Nikki Haley strongly criticized him on Saturday. Mired in legal troubles, he suggested that his indictments made him a sympathetic candidate to African Americans.
He was meeting with a group of conservative African-Americans in South Carolina on Friday evening when he said: “A lot of people say that black people like me because they have suffered so much and been discriminated against, and they see themselves as someone who has been discriminated against. »
“This is the chaos that accompanies Donald Trump, and these kinds of offensive comments will continue every day until the election,” said Nikki Haley.
Donald Trump’s team sweeps away its argument.
“Normality”
But Nikki Haley does not admit defeat. After Saturday, the two rivals should therefore face each other on Tuesday in Michigan.
The Republicans of Idaho, Missouri and North Dakota will then vote in turn, a well-orchestrated ballet which will lead the candidates to one of the biggest political meetings of the year, Super Tuesday.
On March 5, around fifteen states, including Texas, California, Colorado and Virginia, will simultaneously hold their polls during a major election day.
The primaries can in theory stretch until July. But the Trump team is predicting a victory “on March 19” at the latest.
The former president wants to concentrate his resources as soon as possible in his return match with Joe Biden, Democratic president candidate for re-election, before being sucked into his serial legal troubles.
His first criminal trial begins on March 25.