Feb. 24 (UPI) — Former President Donald Trump cruised to victory in Saturday’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary, defeating Nikki Haley, the state’s former governor, by a 20-point margin.
With 100% of the vote counted Trump had garnered 59.8% of the vote, while Haley tallied 39.5%, according to unofficial results posted by the state elections department.
Without mentioning his increasingly bitter rival Haley, his one-time ambassador to the United Nations, Trump quickly turned his attention to November’s general election, where he will likely engage in a rematch with the probable Democratic nominee, President Joe Biden.
“On November 5th, we’re going to get up here and say, ‘Joe you’re fired! You’re fired! Get out!'” he declared.
Haley, however, vowed to continue her fight at least through next week’s Super Tuesday primaries despite her third consecutive loss to Trump following earlier primary defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire.
“We’re going to keep going all the way through Super Tuesday,” Haley told reporters in after casting her vote in her home district of Kiawah Island. “That’s as far as I’ve thought in terms of going forward.”
With nearly 40% of the vote, Haley did better than expected against Trump on Saturday, but with her window of catching up in delegate count appearing to close quickly, she stuck a note of realism in her remarks following Trump’s victory, even while looking ahead to the next primary battle in Michigan on Tuesday.
“I’m an accountant: I know 40% is not 50%, but I also know 40% is not some tiny group,” Haley said. “There are huge numbers in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative. I said earlier this week that no matter what happened in South Carolina I would continue to run for president. I’m a woman of my word.”
An exit poll conducted by NBC News on Saturday showed that while Haley handily won among independents by a 59%-40% margin, she was trounced by Trump among voters who identify as Republicans, losing to the former president by 72%-28%.
The deep and bitter divisions among Republicans over Trump, however, nearly stole the spotlight during the former president’s victory rally. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s Republican U.S. senator, was lustily booed by Trump’s supporters during an appearance at the rally.
Despite praise from the former president, who said, “I love him, he’s a good man,” Graham was unrelentingly heckled. He was similarly booed and denounced as a “traitor” at a Trump rally in South Carolina last year despite becoming one of Trump’s staunchest allies in the Senate.
Earlier on Saturday, Trump spoke for about 90 minutes during his keynote address on the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., where he touched on problems at the southern U.S. border, declared President Joe Biden unfit for office and declared the recent New York fraud judgment against him a part of systemic weaponization of the legal system against him by “sick people.”
On the topic of immigration, Trump depicted the arrival of thousands of asylum seekers at the U.S. border with Mexico as an existential threat to the United States and promised that if reelected he would initiate the “largest deportation in the history of our country.”
“We have no choice,” Trump said. “And it’s not a nice thing and I hate to say it, and those clowns in the media will say ‘oh he’s so mean.’ No, no. they’re killing our people, they’re killing our country.”
The rhetoric repeated previous comments Trump has made on immigration in which he claimed migrants were “poisoning the blood” of the country. Critics said those words echoed the language used by German Nazis during World War II to justify the Holocaust.
At the same time, Trump also sought to broaden his appeal beyond his right-wing Republican base by seeking to allay fears he would wield the Justice Department to extract revenge on his political opponents during a second term.
“Your victory will be our ultimate vindication, your liberty will be our ultimate reward, and the unprecedented success of the United States of America will be my ultimate and absolute revenge,” Trump said. “That’s what I want. Success will be our revenge.”
