Trump's victory adds to the air of inevitability as Haley sharpens the edge

Donald J. Trump's victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday gave him the second of an initial pair of victories in the battle for the Republican nomination, accelerating his push for the party to unite behind him and deepening questions about the path forward for Nikki Haley, his only remaining rival.

Ms. Haley's defeat in New Hampshire came eight days after the former president so thoroughly defeated Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in Iowa that it drove Mr. DeSantis out of the race. Mr Trump and his allies have turned his twin early victories into a milestone – declaring after just the first two contests that the party must now rally behind him to prepare for a November rematch between Mr Trump and President Biden.

No Republican candidate has ever won the first two states and ultimately secured the presidential nomination, a fact Mr. Trump himself noted in his victory speech in Nashua, NH.

“If you win Iowa and you win New Hampshire, they've never lost — there never has been — so we won't be the first, I can tell you,” Trump told the crowd.

Regardless of what comes next, Tuesday's victory sealed Trump's status as the party's standard-bearer in the history books: Before Trump, the only Republicans to ever win both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primaries were presidents.

The race was called by The Associated Press on Tuesday evening as the last polls closed, undermining any drama of the outcome. A few minutes later, Ms. Haley rushed to speak first at her own primary in Concord, N.H., forcefully emphasizing her argument that nominating Mr. Trump would be tantamount to conceding the general election to Democrats.

“You can't solve the mess if you don't win elections,” she said. “A Trump nomination is a Biden victory and a Kamala Harris presidency.”

Ms. Haley vowed Tuesday to persevere despite the loss. “New Hampshire is first in the country – it's not last in the country,” she stated. “This race is far from over.”

Before Mr. Trump even took the stage Tuesday night, the former president called Ms. Haley “delusional” in a social media post, one of several he wrote in all caps as she spoke.

It was a preview of a caustic and sometimes crude speech from the former president, in which he used the national platform of a victory speech to bash his only remaining rival, whose voters he would ultimately have to win over in the fall.

'She didn't win. She lost,” Trump said, calling her an “impostor” who he beat “so badly.” He mocked Ms. Haley for giving an overconfident concession speech: “This isn't your typical victory speech, but let's not let someone get a victory when she's had a really bad night.”

Republicans almost immediately began increasing pressure on Ms. Haley to quit.

“It's time to call it quits,” said Taylor Budowich, the CEO of Trump's super PAC. Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, who is in the Republican leadership and had previously supported the former president, called out Mr. Trump on social media the “presumptive” nominee. And Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who has been critical of Mr. Trump, formally endorsed him: to declare“Republicans must unite around a single candidate.”

Ms. Haley, Trump's former U.N. ambassador, had tried for months to limit the 2024 primaries to a one-on-one race with him. She got what she wanted on Sunday with Mr. DeSantis' departure, leaving her with just one full day before voting began in New Hampshire to continue her case to independent voters and Republicans that she would be the strongest Republican candidate against Mr. Biden are.

In New Hampshire, she did everything she could, from serving beer to holding babies, as she raced across the state alongside the Republican governor, Chris Sununu, who had endorsed her.

But New Hampshire voters appeared to overlook Ms. Haley's warnings that Mr. Trump, who has been indicted four times in the past year and faces 91 felonies, would bring “chaos” to the campaign trail and be particularly vulnerable to a defeat in the US. a general election.

The attacks between Mr Trump, 77, and Ms Haley, 52, had escalated sharply in recent days.

He returned to his nativist playbook to emphasize her birth name, then purposefully garbled it in social media posts, even indulging in conspiracy theories about her fitness to serve because she is the daughter of Indian immigrants (she was born in America). Ms Haley questioned Trump's mental acuity after he confused her name with Nancy Pelosi's and used the incident to push for a generational change.

In her concession speech on Tuesday, she cited that verbal error when someone shouted “Geriatric!” called out.

Ms. Haley told the crowd, “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate will be the party that wins this election.”

Now Ms. Haley must find traction beyond the first two states, where almost all of the campaigning and advertising took place. Her super PAC has spent more than $71 million so far — and 99.9 percent of that money was deposited in Iowa or New Hampshire, according to federal data.

Mrs. Haley is in for a terribly long month. She opted not to compete in the Nevada caucuses with Mr. Trump on Feb. 8 after the state party drafted rules favorable to him.

“I'm happy to announce that we just won Nevada,” Trump said on Tuesday. The formal caucuses in Nevada could still take place in two weeks, but because Mr Trump is the only serious Republican candidate left in the battle for delegates, he is expected to win them all.

The next major clash between Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley will come on Feb. 24 during the primaries in Ms. Haley's home state of South Carolina, where she once served as governor.

As the calendar slows down, it is Mr. Trump with the political momentum.

In the past 10 days, four of Trump's vanquished rivals have all lined up behind him: Mr. DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota and South Carolina's junior senator, Tim Scott, who first appointed Ms. Haley to the Senate .

“You must really hate her,” Mr. Trump joked to Mr. Scott on stage Tuesday.

Mr. Scott walked up to the microphone next to Mr. Trump and responded, “I just love you.”

On Monday, Mr. Trump was also endorsed by a Republican lawmaker from Ms. Haley's home state, Rep. Nancy Mace, who had tried to oust Mr. Trump after she sharply criticized his behavior surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol . . Ms. Haley had campaigned alongside Ms. Mace in 2022.

“You are seeing this moment of unification happening, when in a normal primary election you could see it happening in June or July,” Sen. J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio, who campaigned for Trump in New Hampshire this week, said in a brief letter . interview. “You see it in January because the race is essentially over.”

Ms. Haley has vowed to persevere.

“There are still dozens of states to go,” Ms. Haley said Tuesday evening. “And next is my dear state of South Carolina.”

The Haley campaign has already announced a $4 million ad campaign in South Carolina and is organizing fundraising trips to New York, Florida, California and Texas over the next two weeks to replenish its coffers. Ms. Haley's campaign and her allies have argued that Mr. Trump remains at around 50 percent support in the first two states, a sign of potential vulnerability because he is universally known as a former president.

The strategists running the Trump campaign, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, predicted in their own memo ahead of Tuesday's vote that Ms. Haley would — in all caps — be “demolished and embarrassed” in South Carolina if she did not quit with the elections. race before then.

Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist who had worked on a super PAC supporting former Vice President Mike Pence, said Ms. Haley had now lost her best chance for an outright early victory.

“This is a black and white thing: you either win or you lose,” Mr. Reed said, before invoking the famous commercial rental car wars of the past. “It's hard to stay Avis – 'We're number two or number three!' – behind Hertz.”