Trump’s Mob-style threats could yet bring him down
Although Donald Trump comfortably won the New Hampshire primary vote in his bid to become the Republican candidate in this year’s presidential election, his last remaining opponent has refused to throw in the towel – and Trump is not happy.
“This race is far from over,” Nikki Haley declared – perhaps a little over optimistically – on Tuesday.
By getting within shouting distance of Trump in this vote, and claiming 43.2 per cent vs 54.5 per cent for the ex-president, Haley hopes to keep her bid alive – and continue peeling off moderate Republican voters from the Trump camp.
But Trump’s sense of entitlement got the better of him. “Who the hell was the imposter who went up on the stage before, and like, claimed a victory?” he told supporters in Nashua, soon after the result.
“She’s doing a speech like she won. She didn’t win, she lost. Let’s not have someone take victory when she had a very bad night,” Trump said, with an astounding lack of self-awareness.
Haley will be hoping that Trump’s bullying and entitlement might help her – very – long shot to win the nomination.
Over the coming months, Patricia Crouse, a political scientist at the University of New Haven, thinks this sort of behaviour could backfire on Trump, “especially with independent and more Republican voters”.
That might not be enough to keep Haley’s presidential bid alive. Will Saletan at the moderate Republican Bulwark website thinks “Haley will be the next to go”. “The Republican primaries have become a test not of the candidates, but of the sanity of the Republican electorate. And sanity is losing.”
If, in the dim recesses of Trump’s vindictive mind, the irony – of a man who tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost by seven million votes scolding a woman for legitimately continuing in a primary race – registered, he didn’t show it.
Trump seemed genuinely irked and bewildered that she hadn’t given up and bowed down before him.
After his attempts at mockery, came the Mob-style threats.
“I don’t get too angry. I get even… Just a little note to Nikki. She’s not going to win. But if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in 15 minutes, and I could tell you five reasons why already.
“Not big reasons, little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about, that she will be under investigation within minutes, and so would Ron [DeSantis] have been, but he decided to get out.”
It’s hard to feel sorry for Haley. She’s had nearly a year to denounce Trump for things that aren’t secret: he’s a sex attacker and a fraudster.
He sat on his arse for hours watching his supporters invade the Capitol on television without lifting a finger and spilled classified defence documents like confetti around his Florida gin palace.
At least Haley’s speaking out now, about the man she calls the “chaos candidate”.
But it all looks too little too late. Polls suggest she is trailing Trump by 36 per cent in her home state of South Carolina, where the next primary will be held in February. A solid win there for Trump would surely be curtains for her presidential hopes.
Americans have been as gripped at Brits watching TV contestants deduce who The Traitors are.
But for Democrats and moderate Republicans, it’s easy to spot the real fifth columnists, playing hard and loose with the constitution and US democracy for the sake of their careers. Tim Scott, the black Senator (and seemingly a confirmed bachelor, until he this week announced his engagement to Mindy Noce, as murmurs of a VP job continued to build), describes himself as an evangelical Christian. But that didn’t stop his obsequious endorsement of libertine Trump’s presidential bid.
Last night in New Hampshire, with Scott smiling awkwardly in the background, Trump tore into Haley, the former South Carolina governor who appointed Scott to the Senate. Trump declared to Scott: “You must really hate her.”
Scott, long past the point where he has any dignity left to protect, deflected Trump’s remark by declaring: “I just love you!”
It may be sickening to watch Trump’s Ceausescu/Don Corleone act, with ambitious and unscrupulous Republicans like Scott debasing themselves in front of – or behind – him (the ludicrous Vivek Ramaswamy was also on stage, angling for a Trump cabinet post).
But things are all going to plan, thus far, for President Joe Biden’s high-risk strategy.
The incumbent wants Trump to win the nomination. Biden would probably lose an election against Haley or any other Republican who isn’t Trump. Biden needs Trump to continue his vulgar circus, right up until 8 November, in the hope it will repel enough moderate Republicans.
If Biden had stepped down six months ago, and allowed winsome California Governor Gavin Newsom to take over the reins, Trump’s victory on 8 November would have looked like a long-shot.
But now it remains a real possibility. Brace yourselves for a terrifying nine months.
