Former President Donald Trump took aim at former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley after he achieved victory by relatively wide margins in New Hampshire.
Only minutes after the polls closed, President Trump was declared winner of the New Hampshire primary.
With around 55 percent of the votes reported, President Trump was leading with 53.8 percent. Ms. Haley fell well below that margin with 44.7 percent.
The victory makes President Trump the first person to win both Iowa and New Hampshire as a non-incumbent in over 40 years.
Despite her defeat, Ms. Haley insisted that the race “is far from over.”
“There are still dozens of states,” she said.
Ms. Haley also took a more aggressive posture against President Trump after he was declared the winner. Though she congratulated him on his victory, she claimed that “a Trump nomination is a Biden win and a Kamala Harris presidency.”
“Our fight is not over because we have a country to save,” she said.
Speaking at his own campaign event after his victory in the state, President Trump accused Ms. Haley of unfairly inflating the scope of her second place finish tonight.
“She’s doing like a speech like she won,” President Trump said.
She did the same after Iowa, he said. Though she finished in third place in the Hawkeye State, coming behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, she was quick to claim that it showed that the race was a two person one between herself and President Trump.
Speaking about his handy defeat of Ms. Haley in New Hampshire, President Trump said, “Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night. She had a very bad night.
“She did very poorly, actually. She had to win. [New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu] said, ‘She’s gonna win, she’s gonna win, she’s gonna win.”
President Trump also criticized Ms. Haley’s portrayal of his general election odds.
Since she began her campaign, Ms. Haley has tried to make the case that, whatever his popularity among Republicans, President Trump would be unelectable in a general election.
But that argument has fallen apart recently, with a series of polls showing substantial leads for President Trump in most of the critical swing states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, and the Rust Belt states.
“I just do want to reiterate the polls,” President Trump said. “We’re way up on everybody. We’re way up on Biden.”
Until tonight, President Trump had been reticent to call on Ms. Haley to drop out. On Jan. 22, he told NTD, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, that that was “up to her.”
Now, following his historic win in New Hampshire, President Trump was more willing to call on Ms. Haley to exit the race.
Asked by Fox News whether Ms. Haley should drop out, he said, “I don’t know. She should.
“She should because, otherwise, we have to keep wasting money instead of spending on Biden,” President Trump said. “If she doesn’t drop out, we have to waste money instead of spending it on Biden, which is our focus.”
The call reiterates President Trump’s past calls for the Republican Party to come together to focus on unseating President Joe Biden.
‘America First Defeating America Last’
For the second night in a row, President Trump was joined onstage by several of his former adversaries for the nomination.
They included Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who said that President Trump’s victory was “America first defeating America last.”
“If you want America last, you can go to Joe Biden, [or] you got another candidate—still apparently in the Republican primary—[who will] gut your Social Security to fork over more money to Ukraine so some kleptocrat can buy a bigger house. Go to Nikki Haley,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.
He criticized the former South Carolina governor for wasting time and money staying in the race.
“What we see right now with her continuing in this race is the ugly underbelly of American politics, where the mega donors are trying to do one thing when we the people say another” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “It’s up to us, to we the people, to at long last say ‘Hell no.’ We the people create a government that is accountable to us. And we the people have said tonight we want again, as we did in Iowa, Donald J. Trump.”
“The general election begins tonight,” he declared.
As for President Trump, he’s already turning his focus to future contests, where he’s set to fare well.
In Nevada, President Trump is effectively running unopposed due to a squabble between the state legislature and the Republican National Committee splitting the race into both a primary and caucus. Only the caucus, in which President Trump is the sole primary participant, will go towards adding delegates. Ms. Haley chose to participate in the primary, which will give no delegates.
Later, the two candidates will face off in South Carolina—Ms. Haley’s home state, but nonetheless a state where President Trump holds a considerable lead in the polls.
From The Epoch Times
