Former President Trump wants to win his fourth primary state in a row

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Saturday about Nikki Haley in South Carolina, aiming to embarrass his home state against his last remaining major rival for the Republican nomination.

Trump entered Saturday’s primaries with a huge lead in the polls and the support of the state’s top Republicans, including Sen. Tim Scott, a former rival in the race. Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump and has spent weeks touring the state that has twice elected its governor, warned that the dominant frontrunner, who is 77 and faces four charges, is too old and distracted to do it again to be president.

In every primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has become the party’s nominee. But Haley has repeatedly vowed to keep going if she loses her home state, even as Trump positions himself for a likely rematch in the general election against President Biden.

As Haley voted at her polling place on Kiawah Island, the private residential community where she lives, she said she approached the day with great gratitude.

Haley emphasized her argument that she is the alternative to the two most hated politicians in America, Trump and Biden. Haley emphasized her argument that she is the alternative to the two most hated politicians, Democratic President Joe Biden.

There is a choice, Haley said, speaking alongside her children and mother. We can leave the drama and the chaos behind, and we can leave the incompetence behind, and we can move towards something normal.

Trump, who held a rally and addressed black conservatives at a gala on Friday, was in Maryland on Saturday for an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference before returning to South Carolina. His campaign released a statement saying Haley was no longer living in reality.

The primaries end tonight and it’s time to move on to the general election, campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement released as voting was underway.

Trump’s supporters, including those who previously supported Haley during her time as governor, seemed confident the former president would pull off a solid victory on Saturday.

I supported her when she was governor. She’s done some good things, said Davis Paul, 36, as he waited for Trump at a recent rally in Conway. But I just don’t think she’s ready to take on a candidate like Trump. I don’t think many people can do that.

Trump has invaded the state for a handful of large rallies between fundraisers and events in other states, including Michigan, where the Republican primaries will be held on Tuesday.

He has drawn much larger crowds and campaigned with Gov. Henry McMaster, who succeeded Haley, and Scott, whom Haley elevated to the Senate.

During his speech Friday in Rock Hill, Trump accused Haley of staying in the race to hurt him at the behest of Democratic donors.

All she’s trying to do is hurt us so they can win in November, he said. We won’t let that happen.

During some of those rallies, Trump has made comments that gave Haley more fodder for her stump speeches, such as his Feb. 10 question about why her husband, currently on a South Carolina Army National Guard deployment in Africa, isn’t next to her campaigned. Haley has turned that point into an argument that the frontrunner does not respect service members and their families, a criticism that has long followed Trump as he returns to his suggestion that the late Senator John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, was not a hero because he was captured.

That same evening, Trump claimed he would encourage countries like Russia to do whatever they want against NATO member states

who are delinquent. Which have failed to meet the defense spending targets of the transatlantic alliances. //This isn’t what he said, so I took it out and added what the linked story said.

Haley has cast that moment as evidence that Trump is too volatile and becomes weak in the knees when it comes to Russia.

After one of Haley’s events, Terry Sullivan, a U.S. Navy veteran who lived in Hopkins, said he planned to support Trump but changed his mind after hearing Haley’s criticism of his NATO comments.

One country can say whatever it wants, but when you have an agreement between other countries, we have to join the agreements of other countries, not just on our own, Sullivan said. After listening to Nikki, I think I’m a Nikki supporter now.

Haley made an indirect appeal to Democrats who attended their own presidential primaries in large numbers earlier this month, adding in her speech that anyone can vote in these primaries as long as they did not vote in the February 3 Democratic primary.

Some of those voters have appeared at her events and said that while they planned to vote for Biden in the general election, they planned to cross over into the Republican Party’s primaries on Saturday as a way to now oppose to oppose Trump.

In any other campaign cycle, losing the home state can be detrimental to a campaign. In 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio quit shortly after losing Florida in a blowout against Trump, after his campaign argued that the political winds would shift in his favor once the campaign moved to his home state.

And Haley’s campaign can’t name a state in which they think she will prevail over Trump.

But recently, Haley said in a speech in Greenville that she would stay in the campaign until the last person votes, arguing that those whose contests come after the early primaries and caucuses deserved the right to choose between candidates.

Haley also used that speech, which many thought was an announcement that she would end her campaign, to argue that she feels no need to kiss the ring as others had done, possibly with the prospect of becoming Trump’s running mate to serve.

I don’t fear Trump’s retaliation, Haley reiterated. I don’t look for anything from him. My own political future is of no importance.