Trump rejects plan to install him as Republican nominee without a fight

New Hampshire: Two days after his victory in the New Hampshire primaries, Donald Trump was in a Manhattan courtroom on Friday (AEDT) testifying in his own defence against E. Jean Carroll, the woman suing him for sexual assault and defamation.

He was unusually compliant and spent less than five minutes answering his lawyer’s questions. He stood by his previous remarks branding Carroll a liar – “One hundred per cent, yes” – and did not turn the hearing into a circus, as Carroll’s lawyer had feared.

On the same day, he also turned down the opportunity to become the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee without a fight. The Republican National Committee, which oversees the party’s elections, had been set to consider a proposal to declare him its choice before he formally clinches the requisite number of delegates.

Trump ally, David Bossie, was behind the draft resolution to fellow RNC committee members that could have been voted on next week at the group’s winter meeting in Las Vegas.

But Trump took to his social media site to stop it: “I feel, for the sake of PARTY UNITY, that they should NOT go forward with this plan, but that I should do it the ‘Old Fashioned’ way, and finish the process off AT THE BALLOT BOX,” he wrote.

It seems the only fight he is really interested in for now is the one against his former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for the 2024 presidential nomination.

While any other presidential hopeful might have buckled under the weight of so many legal challenges – he faces 91 criminal charges plus the civil lawsuits – Trump has used them as political capital to all but cement himself as the candidate to run again for the White House against Joe Biden.

“Clearly he’s the nominee to beat, and as long as he’s healthy, there’s very little anyone can do about that,” says veteran election analyst Larry Sabato.

“And this was all expected because the Republican Party has changed so much. This is not your father’s or your grandfather’s Republican Party any more. It’s Donald Trump’s.”

But while the New Hampshire and Iowa results were a massive boost for the incendiary Republican, they also carried ominous signs that make his nomination a considerable risk for his party.

In both states, Trump won a share of the vote that was far greater than what he achieved in 2016, when he faced Republican voters for the first time.

But Trump also risks losing enough Republicans – as well as a substantial proportion of independent and swinging voters – and that would thwart his chances at the general election in November.

According to AP VoteCast, a survey of primary voters, 21 per cent of Republicans who cast ballots in New Hampshire said they would be so dissatisfied with Trump as the nominee that they wouldn’t vote for him.

Likewise, 15 per cent of Republicans who participated in the Iowa caucuses last week shared the same view, exposing vulnerabilities in Trump’s ability to lead the Republicans to victory.

Biden, for his part, also faces significant challenges. Four years ago, when America was reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic and a national reckoning on racial injustice after the death of George Floyd, the Democratic stalwart was widely viewed as the best man to heal a deeply divided nation.

Today, however, he faces record-low approval ratings and deep scepticism about his ability to do the job. The crisis at the US-Mexico border, cost of living pressures and his backing of Israel in its war in Gaza have dented support among his traditional coalition: young people, black voters, Latinos and progressives.

And his greatest weakness is something he cannot control: his age. At 81, Biden is already the oldest person to occupy the Oval Office. If he were to win the election, he would be 82 by inauguration day and 86 by the end of his second term – if he made it that far. Trump is 77.

“It’s just inevitable that things might crop up, particularly if you’ve had a demanding life, as Biden certainly has,” says Sabato, the founder and director for the Centre for Politics at the University of Virginia.

“So he does have to address the issue of age. It’s inescapable.”

Equally inescapable is the fact that America is now 284 days away from an election rematch the vast majority of its citizens don’t actually want.

Loading

One Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week showed Trump leading Biden at 40 per cent to 34 per cent, but most respondents were either unsure of who they preferred, or planning to vote for someone else, or weren’t going to show up the polls at all.

This was consistent with the mood among voters in New Hampshire this week.

In the town of Salem, Terri Taylor, a registered Republican, wanted Haley to be the party’s presidential candidate, citing her “calm nature”, foreign policy experience and her background as an accountant and a two-term governor of South Carolina.

But she added that she disliked Trump so much that if he got the GOP nomination, she would probably vote for Biden over him, albeit reluctantly.

“I just don’t understand his popularity,” she said of the former president’s support among his base. “It’s like a cult.”

In the state capital, Concord, registered Democrat Kris Make said she did not have faith in Biden and used this week’s primary race to instead vote for his long-shot challenger for the presidential nomination, Minnesota congressman Dean Phillips.

“He’s made quite a few blunders and his age is definitely an issue,” she said of Biden. “He’s shown some weakness at times. Most of all I don’t think he can beat Trump – and that terrifies me.”

Meanwhile, about 50 minutes south in the town of Windham, 72-year-old Benjamin Grelle said he would inevitably support Trump, just as he did in 2016 and 2020, citing the economy and border security as his top priorities.

“But I have no doubt he’s a bad man,” he added.

The lack of enthusiasm for a Trump-Biden rematch is exactly what Haley is banking on to stay in the race.

She set the tone shortly after Trump was declared the winner of the New Hampshire Republican primaries with more than 54 per cent of the vote – about 11 points more than Haley.

In a speech that left Trump seething, Haley insisted she would continue to fight for the nomination, starting with the South Carolina primaries on February 24.

The next day, she flew back to her home state to hold a rally in North Charleston, and embarked on an advertising blitz targeting Trump as “too much chaos” and Biden as “too old”.

“There’s a better choice for a better America,” a narrator says on the ad.

But Haley faces an uphill battle over the next month to maintain her momentum– and more importantly, sustain the donors whose money she needs to keep her campaign alive.

She has lost two of those large voters since her defeat in New Hampshire – metals magnate Andy Sabin who said the race was essentially over, and Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, Reuters reported. But according to The New York Times, she has raised about $US5 million more than Trump – $US50.1 million ($76 million) in the last six months of 2023, – with help from Wall St and corporate executives keen not to see Trump return to the Oval Office.

But she’s polling 30 points behind Trump in her home state, and most of the Republican leadership has overwhelmingly coalesced around him. The most notable is South Carolina senator and former presidential hopeful Tim Scott, who Haley appointed to Congress when she was governor, and whose endorsement she had been seeking.

What’s more, Trump’s vitriol and bullying is only likely to get worse. In the past few weeks alone, he has often cited Haley’s given name, “Nimarata” Nikki Randhawa, as a dog whistle to remind people she was the daughter of Indian immigrants.

He refers to her as “Birdbrain” to insult her intelligence, and has falsely claimed that she wants open borders and plans to cut social security and Medicare benefits for most Americans.

This week, he even put out a Truth Social post warning that anyone who contributes to her campaign “will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp”.

“We don’t want them, and will not accept them,” he wrote.

Haley, at least for now, seems undeterred. After all, only two states have voted for their preferred presidential candidate, she says, and there are 48 more to go.

“So we are not going to sit there and just give up,” she says.

“Bring it, Donald.”

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.