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      Haley vows to fight on despite Trump win in New Hampshire – podcast

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      Donald Trump has won the first in the nation primary election in New Hampshire, making it almost inevitable that we’re poised for the first rematch in a general election since 1956. Despite coming in second in a two-person race, Nikki Haley celebrated at her election night event in Concord.
      So in our final episode of this special three-part series from New Hampshire, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Lauren Gambino and Semafor’s David Weigel about whether or not Haley actually has reason to be positive. Or is she running on hope rather than reason?

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      Trump turns into sinister playground bully in New Hampshire victory lap

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      The cruelty is the point.As Joe Biden acknowledged on Tuesday night, Donald Trump now has the Republican presidential nomination sewn up. But like a Roman emperor or mob boss, Trump used his victory speech in New Hampshire to humiliate his former opponents – and make sinister threats against his last primary rival.The former US president had followed up his record win in the Iowa caucuses with victory over Nikki Haley, his former ambassador to the UN, with a double-digit triumph in less favourable political territory. As Republican politicians and donors scramble to jump aboard the Trump train, it is clearly game over for the Never Trumpers.Trump could have been magnanimous in victory and congratulated Haley on a race well run. Instead, he was palpably irked by her refusal to drop out of the race. Petty and vindictive, he became a playground bully punching down for the benefit of an audience that glories in metaphorical violence.Addressing a crowded hotel ballroom in Nashua, he gave Haley a dark warning: “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.”There were echoes of political operative Lee Atwater or Roger Stone’s dirty tricks campaigns, or Trump senior campaign aide Chris LaCivita’s Swift Boat veterans takedown of John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election. It was also redolent of Trump’s own vicious attacks on Senator Ted Cruz’s wife and father (whom he baselessly linked to the John F Kennedy assassination) in 2016.But Trump has plenty of humiliation to serve around, even to people on his own side. He invited former opponent Vivek Ramaswamy to speak but only “if he promises to do it in a minute or less” (admittedly, given Ramaswamy’s fiendishly irritating debate performances, many will take Trump’s side on that one).Then there was Senator Tim Scott, another ex-rival who has already debased himself with a fawning endorsement of Trump. With his unerring ability to get under people’s skin, he said to Scott that, since former South Carolina governor Haley appointed him to the Senate, “You must really hate her.”There was an awkward silence in the room and a rare grunt of dissent from someone. To rescue the situation, Scott stepped forward to the lectern, looked at Trump and grovelled: “I just love you!” The crowd exhaled in relief. Scott was the hapless father in The Godfather who had accepted: “For justice, we must go to Don Corleone.”Like Chris Christie in 2016, Scott has surrendered his principles to the inevitability of Trump. Haley now stands alone in a Republican party that belongs to him. Did she ever have a chance? Perhaps she could have done more to make it a choice rather than a coronation.Haley could have emphasised her spouse’s military record and gone after Trump on his description of fallen solders as “losers” and “suckers”. She could have celebrated her identity as a daughter of Indian immigrants to contrast herself with Trump’s bigotry, nativism and racism. She could have played up her gender and what masterstroke it would be for Republicans, not Democrats, to produce America’s first female president after nearly 250 years.She could also have been more forceful in making the electability argument, taking her cue from Christie who hammered Trump over his defeat in election after election.But none of these are deemed viable in today’s party. Instead, when Haley did go bold and against the grain, it was on foreign policy, ardently pro-Israel and anti-Russia, and constantly bashing China. It was never going to win many extra votes but it was sure to alienate the isolationist “America First” wing of the party, personified by Ramaswamy.Other flashes of courage arrived too little too late. Early on Tuesday Haley appeared on Fox News’s Fox & Friends and said, bluntly, she did not know if they would “tell the truth” about her campaign. Later, in her concession speech, she pushed the electability argument: “The worst-kept secret in politics is how badly the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump.”If it was such a badly kept secret, why not shout it from the rooftops months earlier?But like many bullies, Trump’s ostentatious show of strength was motivated by inner weakness. Haley did well enough among independents to raise red flags for Republicans in the general election.The Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, commented: “It’s clear that Trump is political poison to moderates. Sane and moral republicans said their conscience won’t allow them to vote for a chaos-driven maniac who is under 91 criminal counts, a proven sexual predator, and authoritarian wannabe who will shred the constitution and burn this country down.”Biden, meanwhile, won the unsanctioned Democratic primary without even being on the ballot. He, not Trump, was the winner of the night when judging how things will play out in November.Trump rules by fear in his party but lacks the love of his nation. For many voters, it is not love but loathing. More

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      Trump v Biden increasingly likely but Haley undaunted: key takeaways from New Hampshire primary

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      The New Hampshire primary, even with its history of unpredictability and freethinking independents, produced a familiar result on Tuesday: Donald Trump v Joe Biden.After months of heavy campaigning in the state, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley came in second place in the Republican primary. Securing a double-digit win over Haley, Trump nabbed his second decisive victory after the Iowa caucuses a week before.In the Democratic primary, Joe Biden’s name wasn’t on the ballot after the Democratic National Committee decided to have their first primary in South Carolina in early February. But New Hampshire decided to go ahead with the Democratic primary anyway, and Biden handily won through write-in votes, although the DNC has said that no delegates will be awarded based on the results.The dynamics of the New Hampshire primary, which marked the second voting event of the 2024 election season, also held some insights for the high-stakes general election in November. Here are five things you need to know.1. The independent vote couldn’t topple Trump, but it should still make him nervousNew Hampshire is known for its independent voting bloc – which comprises 40% of the electorate. This group has helped numerous presidential candidates rise to the top in past elections, or at least remain competitive. Haley was hoping Republican-leaning independent voters would respond to her tempered messaging, in which she pitched herself as a younger, fresher face and antidote to both Trump and Biden.Although independent voters were not able to lift Haley to victory, their support for her could create a problem down the road for Trump. According to an NBC News exit poll, Haley won 73% of Republican primary voters who described themselves as moderate. If Trump wants to defeat Biden in November, he will need to sway some of those moderate Republicans, and Haley’s strong performance with that voting bloc indicates the former president has much more work to do to win their support.2. Haley remains undaunted after two bruising lossesDespite her third-place finish in Iowa and her double-digit loss in New Hampshire, Haley still insists that she will continue on in the Republican primary. As she addressed supporters in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, Haley expressed optimism about her home state of South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary on 24 February.“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation,” Haley said. “This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”But polls show Haley trailing far behind Trump in South Carolina, so it remains unclear how the state might shake the fundamental dynamics of the race.3. Biden avoided embarrassment with some help from his campaign and surrogatesBecause of the strange circumstances of the Democratic primary, Biden’s name was not on the ballot, though the names of long-shot candidates Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson were. There was some concern that Biden’s decision not to run in New Hampshire could provide an opening for a candidate like Phillips, who tried to present himself as more electable than the sitting president.But in the end, Biden cruised to an easy victory thanks to the help of a write-in campaign led by his most loyal supporters and promoted by surrogates like Congressman Ro Khanna of California, who traveled to New Hampshire over the weekend.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion4. Republicans and Democrats appear ready to turn their attention to the general electionNew Hampshire provided further evidence that the 2024 general election in November will indeed be a rematch between Biden and Trump, and members of both parties indicated on Tuesday that they are ready to move past the primary.“While we work toward November 2024, one thing is increasingly clear today,” Julie Chávez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager, said on Tuesday. “Donald Trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where he’ll face the only person to have ever beaten him at the ballot box: Joe Biden.”With more and more Republican lawmakers lining up to endorse Trump, the former president’s allies called on Haley to withdraw from the race to allow the party to focus on defeating Biden in November.Taylor Budowich, CEO of the pro-Trump Super PAC Make America Great Again Inc, said on Tuesday: “It’s time for unity, it’s time to take the fight to the Democrats, and for Nikki Haley: it’s time to drop out.”5. Trump’s election lie was not as popular in New Hampshire as it was in IowaDuring the Iowa caucuses, a clear majority of Republican voters said they believe that Trump won the 2020 election, despite all evidence supporting a fair Biden win. In New Hampshire, early exit polling and interviews showed that there was more of an even split among Republicans in that state who believe the false claims about widespread election fraud in the 2020 election and those who do not.As Haley voter Patricia Hemenway told the Guardian on Tuesday: “I will have to say the January 6 thing was absolutely revolting to me.”Nevertheless, Trump leaned into the big lie in his victory speech on Tuesday. “We won in 2016. And if you really remember, if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020, by more,” he said. “And we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016.” More

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      Trump takes aim at Haley in combative New Hampshire primary victory speech

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      Donald Trump has won the New Hampshire primary, likely cementing his place as the Republican presidential nominee.The win over Nikki Haley, who had briefly threatened to rein in the former president, suggests there will be a smooth path to the GOP nomination for Trump, who also won easily in the Iowa caucuses last week. Addressing supporters in Nashua, Trump took a victory lap with a combative speech that included sharp criticism of Haley.“She had a very bad night,” Trump said. “She came in third [in Iowa], and she’s still hanging around.”The Associated Press called the race just as the last remaining polling places in New Hampshire closed at 8pm ET, following a contentious primary that saw groups backing both candidates spending millions of dollars in increasingly vicious TV advertising.Haley, who branded Trump a “chaos” candidate, promised a more palatable version of the rightwing fire and brimstone that has come to characterize the Republican party. She surged in the polls in New Hampshire in mid-December, but could not capitalize on that momentum on Tuesday night.Despite her disappointing performance in New Hampshire, Haley insisted she would continue on to her home state of South Carolina, which will hold its Republican primary next month. As she spoke to supporters in Concord on Tuesday, Haley congratulated Trump on his victory in the first primary state, but emphasized the importance of upcoming races.“New Hampshire is first in the nation. It is not the last in the nation,” Haley told supporters in Concord. “This race is far from over. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.”But polls show Trump maintaining a significant lead in South Carolina, so it is unclear how that primary might reshape the dynamics of the race. New Hampshire appeared to represent the last significant threat to what seems set to become a Trump coronation. In a purple state that voted for Joe Biden over Trump in 2020, Haley presented herself as a centrist Republican, while Trump continued to proffer rightwing populism in a series of rallies in recent days. Haley was Trump’s only serious contender in New Hampshire, after Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race on Sunday.As he addressed supporters, Trump derided Haley’s efforts to downplay her loss in New Hampshire, saying: “Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night.”New Hampshire primary: read more
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      Trump’s team similarly ridiculed Haley’s decision to stay in the race after two decisive losses, with one of the former president’s strategists mocking her as “delusional”. Appearing undaunted, Haley stuck to her campaign message that Trump was incapable of leading the Republican party into a more promising future, referencing the former president’s numerous legal battles. Trump has now been charged with 91 felony counts across four criminal cases, and he spent much of the past week in court for a defamation case.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“With Donald Trump, you have one bout of chaos after another – this court case, that controversy, this tweet, that senior moment,” Haley said on Tuesday night. “You can’t fix Joe Biden’s chaos with Republican chaos.”But Trump’s routine continues to appeal. Tina Lorenz, who said she had supported Donald Trump since 2016, was among those who voted for the former president on Tuesday.“He is representing the American people. He is not out for himself. He’s not out for political gain. He’s not out for financial reasons. He doesn’t need money, he doesn’t need fame and fortune. He already has all of that,” Lorenz, 63, said.“He is out there for the average person. And that’s what’s happening, we’ve become so polarized, that there’s nobody out there for just regular people.”The result in New Hampshire suggests Trump will become his party’s presidential candidate for the third election in a row, and will likely face Biden in November. After Trump’s wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, more and more Republican lawmakers are lining up to endorse him. Speaking at Trump’s victory party on Tuesday, former presidential candidate Tim Scott, who dropped out of the primary race in November and endorsed the former president last week, called on Republicans to unify.“It is time for the Republican party to coalesce around our nominee and the next president of United States: Donald Trump. Let’s get that party started tonight,” Scott said.Despite Haley’s claims to the contrary, Democrats also clearly believe the Republican presidential primary is effectively over, and they are already turning their attention to the general election.“Tonight’s results confirm Donald Trump has all but locked up the GOP nomination, and the election denying, anti-freedom Maga movement has completed its takeover of the Republican party,” said Julie Chavez Rodriguez, Biden’s campaign manager. “While we work toward November 2024, one thing is increasingly clear today: Donald Trump is headed straight into a general election matchup where he’ll face the only person to have ever beaten him at the ballot box: Joe Biden.” More

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      The primaries are mere formalities. Trump is Republicans’ once and future king | Lloyd Green

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      On Tuesday night, Donald Trump emerged as the winner of New Hampshire’s Republican primary and presumptive Republican presidential nominee, handily defeating Nikki Haley. He is the first non-incumbent Republican to win both Iowa and New Hampshire. South Carolina’s contest is next month and those that follow are formalities on the road to coronation.The Republican party belongs to him. “It has to be Trump as long as … he can fog a mirror,” Steve Bannon told Jonathan Karl of ABC News. Haley has pledged to remain in the race, but the fall campaign has begun. As the polls closed in New Hampshire, the Biden White House announced a campaign shake-up. This is not a well-oiled machine.For the third time, Trump is his party’s standard bearer. Maybe this run will be a charm, so to speak. Maybe for the first time he will garner a plurality, if not outright majority, of the popular vote, a feat that has previously eluded him.By those metrics, Hillary Clinton bested him in 2016 and Joe Biden did the same four years later. To put a point on it, no non-incumbent Republican since George HW Bush in 1988 has garnered that level of national support. Rather, like George W Bush in 2000, Trump owes his initial win to the mechanics of the electoral college.Election day 2024, however, may be different. The Democrats had best be prepared for that possibility and for the day after. At the moment, Biden lags Trump in trial heats. Among independents, the president trails by as many as 10 points. Beyond that, Biden, 81, exudes frailty. His speeches are dull affairs, often more closely watched for signs of infirmity, as opposed to policy.His mantra of democracy being on the line in 2024 is true. Yet it repeatedly falls flat. In too many instances, he discounts prevailing public sentiment. Popularism, the notion that politicians ought to follow the polls and do what’s electorally expedient, is honored more often than not in the breach. Triangulation, as mastered by Bill Clinton, is a thing of the past.To illustrate, Biden continues to double down on porous borders, poking a stick in the eye of public opinion. His win on Monday before the supreme court on Texas and its razor-wire barriers may eventually prove politically self-injurious. The justice department may have scored a victory for federal supremacy and executive power at the expense of Biden’s own standing.Beyond that, no Republican sits in the cabinet, breaking a tradition upheld by re-election-minded Democrats. Barack Obama placed Republicans Robert Gates at the Pentagon and Ray LaHood, a former Illinois congressman, at transportation. Appointing Arizona’s Cindy McCain, wife of the late Republican nominee and Trump nemesis, and Jeff Flake, a former Arizona senator, as ambassadors doesn’t quite make the cut. Out of country, out of mind.In case Biden needs further reminding, he didn’t win in a landslide. Obama’s vice-president never was and never will be the second coming of FDR, much as he attempts to convince himself that he is “transformative”.Meanwhile, Trump praises authoritarians. He vows to act as a dictator on day one, at least for a few hours anyway. Take him seriously on that and wonder if he means it literally or not.What dictator can push himself away from the table of dictatorship after just one day? Just before the New Hampshire voting, he mused about 12 more years in office and let the word “fascist” slip from his tongue.America ought to be frightened, but less than a majority actually fears the prospect of Trump as American Caesar. The rest is open to arguments that Biden is over his head and that Kamala Harris should have starred in Veep, the HBO sitcom, rather than be a heartbeat from the Oval Office.Trump is the strongman his base yearned for. Back in 2016, Paul LePage, then governor of Maine, made it explicit: “We need a Donald Trump to show some authoritarian power in our country.” So much for 1776, the declaration of independence and the US constitution.As in Iowa, Haley’s candidacy served as a magnet for high-end suburbanites, a constituency whose clout diminishes daily within the Republican party. Looking back, she never had a chance.Haley mulled cuts to social security and raising the age for retirement. These days, Americans live medically challenged lives. Chronic illness supplants death on life’s back nine. Her pitch might have been designed for her donors, and there are too few of them to matter.Under Trump, the party of Lincoln has been transformed into a mixed martial arts octagon. The ex-president channels his core supporters’ resentments better than anyone. Theirs is a symbiotic relationship. Gladiator, the Oscar-winning Ridley Scott film about Commodus, the debauched and unhinged Roman emperor, remains the movie for our time.
      Lloyd Green is an attorney in New York and served in the US Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992 More

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      Ron DeSantis failed because Trump’s base wants the man himself, not an imitation | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      So long, Ron. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, Ron DeSantis has dropped out of the Republican presidential primary and endorsed Donald Trump. This outcome has looked inevitable ever since the campaign’s botched launch announcement on Twitter, but it was surprising how quickly and totally DeSantis surrendered after losing just a single contest. Many people had heralded DeSantis as the man who could take down Trump, but it was not to be. His campaign began with a whimper – then ended with one too.The political flaws of DeSantis and his campaign have been so numerous that it’s amazing the Florida governor ever generated so much buzz. He looked politically impressive operating in the safely conservative state of Florida, but he was completely unprepared for the intensity of competitive national politics. He lacked the empathy and personal warmth necessary to connect with voters and donors alike. He proved a poor administrator. He tried to run on his management of the Covid-19 pandemic when voters had moved on. Worst of all, he could offer no plausible reason why Trump voters should opt for him rather than for the real thing.Despite all of this, DeSantis found huge success among a certain class of Republican pundits and donors. At one point he was hailed by the Murdoch press as “DeFuture”, and conservative writers fell over one another to praise him as the Trump who “gets things done”. When someone so flawed has so many boosters, it’s worth asking about the motivation of the boosters.In this case, the DeSantis campaign was promoted by a set of conservative elites who saw the opportunity for a kind of “Trumpism without Trump”. DeSantis drew support from people who were happy with the broad direction of the Republican party under Trump, but had doubts about the former president’s competence. Since his victory in 2016, Trump has been a serial loser of elections who invests little time in trying to implement policies, preferring to focus instead on the melodrama of his own political and legal struggles. DeSantis, by contrast, exudes the kind of grim, thuggish determination of Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister whose policies have made him a hero of the American nationalist right.As an electoral proposition, this vision was flawed from the get-go. The idea of “Trumpism without Trump” was to take Maga content and present it in some more palatable form. But this ignores the fact that for many grassroots Republicans, Trump’s form is his content. They support him not because of the concrete policies he will implement but because of who he is and what he represents. The unhinged style of communication, the self-pitying beefs with “the establishment”, the unfiltered racism and bigotry – these are the essence of Trumpism, not paraphernalia which can be discarded.For decades, Republican elites have believed they could channel and control the populism and bigotry of their party’s base. A video from the 2008 election which periodically goes viral of John McCain defending Barack Obama in the face of a racist question from a voter, represents the exception in this history rather than the norm. As a rule, Republican donors and politicians have winked at or actively encouraged the worst instincts of their base, believing they could be harnessed and ridden to victory. The DeSantis candidacy was just the latest example of this. But now the base is in the saddle, and what it wants is Trumpism red in tooth and claw – not some bloodless imitation.However doomed it was at the polls, there might have been some redemptive quality in the DeSantis project if it had offered a challenge to the yawning ethical chasm at the heart of the Republican party. But rather than denouncing the cruelty towards immigrants, women and trans people that pervades the modern conservative movement, DeSantis merely promised to pursue it with more ruthless efficiency. He showed indifference to the suffering of the people who got in his way, such as the migrants he transported to Martha’s Vineyard and then abandoned for the purposes of a political stunt. The experience made them feel, one said, “like cattle” – yet DeSantis defends the action to this day.The fact that supporters of the DeSantis project were not actually trying to challenge the core premises and practices of Trumpism will make it easier for them to take the next step: reverting to support for Trump. After he dropped out, DeSantis endorsed Trump with unseemly speed and it may take some of his backers a little longer to come around. But just as in 2016, Republican politicians and media figures will inevitably follow their base and resume backing the former president, even as he engages in Hitlerian rhetoric about migrants “poisoning the blood” of America and promises to be a dictator “on day one”.As John McCain showed in 2008, there is an alternative course available to former DeSantis backers, if they wanted to take it. They could say publicly what many of them know privately – that while Trump poses a unique danger to the republic, Joe Biden is a decent, patriotic man with whom they happen to have some policy disagreements. They could lament the grip that a racist and authoritarian figure has on such a large segment of their party, and even try to challenge it. But they will not, because that’s never what the DeSantis candidacy was really about it. Instead, they’ll get in line behind Trump – and march themselves and everyone else closer and closer to disaster.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a podcast and newsletter More

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      Court rejects Trump’s request to reconsider appeal against gag order in election interference case

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      A federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected Donald Trump’s request that it reconsider his appeal against a gag order imposed against him in the criminal case over his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.The move paves the way for a potential final challenge to the US supreme court.The decision by the US court of appeals to deny Trump an en banc rehearing – where the full bench of judges consider the matter – marks the latest setback for the former president after an earlier three-judge panel also rejected his appeal.For months, Trump has been attempting to free himself from a limited protective order entered by the US district judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the criminal case in Washington. The order prohibits him from making inflammatory statements that could intimidate trial witnesses or poison the jury pool.The gag order came after special counsel prosecutors complained that Trump’s brazen public statements attacking them, court staff and potential trial witnesses could chill witness testimony and impede the fair administration of justice.The filing from prosecutors drew attention to Trump’s rally speeches and posts on his Truth Social platform. In one post, Trump attacked his vice-president, Mike Pence, wildly claiming he had “made up stories about me” and had gone over to the “dark side” by talking to prosecutors.Trump has also attacked Gen Mark Milley, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff and another likely trial witness, after his testimony was cited in the indictment. Trump suggested that Milley had committed treason and mused that people who committed treason have historically been executed.Chutkan agreed with prosecutors and issued an order preventing Trump from assailing prosecutors, court staff and trial witnesses. She allowed Trump only to have free rein to attack the Biden administration, the US justice department and allege the case was politically motivated.Trump appealed but had his challenge largely rejected by a three-judge panel at the DC circuit, which upheld the restrictions with the caveat that Trump would also be free to assail the special counsel Jack Smith and people involved in post-2020 election matters as long as he did not target their trial testimony.The panel rejected Trump’s position that there could only be a gag order after a statement by him had chilled a witness to be misguided, not least because the point of the gag order was to ensure no such harm would occur in the first place.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Mr Trump is a former president and current candidate for the presidency,” the appeals court wrote in a 68-page opinion. “But Mr Trump is also an indicted criminal defendant, and he must stand trial in a courtroom under the same procedures that govern all other criminal defendants.”The defeat led Trump to seek a rehearing from the same three-judge panel of Patricia Millet, Cornelia Pillard and Brad Garcia – all Democratic nominees to the bench – as well as from the full court. On Tuesday, Trump had both of the rehearing requests turned down in single-page orders.The chilly reception that Trump has received from the DC circuit over his gag order appeals has been unsurprising. Protective orders are standard in criminal cases, and federal appeals courts are generally loath to interfere with the wide discretion enjoyed by trial judges. More

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      Time to back Trump: Republican donors accept the inevitable

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      Vivek Ramaswamy urged the crowd to end the primary right here. Doug Burgum told them to think of safety and prosperity. Tim Scott posed a series of questions that culminated with: “How many y’all want me to stop talking so you can hear from your next president, Donald J Trump?”As the three failed US presidential candidates turned endorsers stood alongside Trump on stage in Laconia, New Hampshire, on Monday, the crowd chanted “Four more years!” and the message to Republicans was clear: join us now or be cast into the political wilderness.The show of unity exemplified the breakneck speed with which elected officials, rightwing media and megadonors are consolidating around Trump as their seemingly inevitable nominee in 2024. Trump told the rally: “Now is the time for the Republican party to come together. We have to unify … We’re all in the same team, 100% focused on [Joe] Biden and beating him in November.”Buoyed by a record win in last week’s Iowa caucuses and the exit of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, Trump heads into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary election with only one opponent standing in his way: Nikki Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN. If the former president wins convincingly, as opinion polls suggest, Haley will face renewed pressure to end the anti-Trump resistance.Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington DC, said: “The two-thirds of the party that’s Maga-friendly has largely coalesced around Trump, and is continuing to do so. It would take a miracle for Haley to even make it a race at this point. Miracles happen, but you don’t predict them.”He added: “Anyone who wants to remain viable in today’s Republican party will either fall into line publicly, or be quiet in not falling into line. And that’s what you will see among the donor class.”It is a striking contrast from the 2016 primary season, when multiple candidates continued to battle Trump into May. It is also very different mood music from a year ago when, in the wake of disappointing midterm elections, there were rumblings of discontent in the Republican party and a desire to turn the page.The shift was evident in the donor class. Club For Growth, an anti-tax group, and Americans For Prosperity, founded by the billionaire industrialist Koch brothers, poured millions of dollars into an effort to stop Trump. Last May, for example, Club For Growth released a golf-themed ad attacking him over his plan for social security. Americans for Prosperity endorsed Haley and by December had spent $4m to boost her.But just as in 2016, when Jeb Bush was the establishment choice, the primary has demonstrated that money is no substitute for having the right candidate at the right time. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina received backing from high-profile donors but was outshone in debates, and never gained traction in the polls. He withdrew and endorsed Trump.As DeSantis’s profile soared, he enjoyed an influx of cash, only to burn it through it rapidly with over-hiring, staff shakeups and frequent “resets”. Last November Robert Bigelow, one of DeSantis’s most prominent funders, announced that he was switching allegiance to Trump. By some estimates, DeSantis and an allied Super Pac spent at least $53m in Iowa – a return of roughly $2,262 per vote as he lost by nearly 30 percentage points.Meanwhile, Trump proved more resilient that expected. He weaponised a series of criminal indictments and court appearances to rally his base and raise funds. Polls showed him beating Biden in a hypothetical match-up, undercutting the electability argument. As a former president and reality TV star, he enjoyed the kind of celebrity that money can’t buy.Olsen said: “Money has always been an overrated feature of politics. Money helps when it’s delivering a message that resonates. What the big money in the Republican party has been doing for the last decade or more has been getting behind candidates whose message does not resonate.”The Trump campaign has relished the failure of big-money groups trying to tear him down. Speaking from Charleston, South Carolina, the Trump fundraiser Ed McMullen said: “One of the great stories of this primary cycle is that the hundreds of millions of dollars spent against Donald Trump have only fuelled the support for him.“People don’t want oligarchs in the United States determining who the president’s gonna be. They are absolutely turning to the president, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in negative TV ads.”McMullen, a former ambassador to Switzerland who was at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last week, claims that dozens of DeSantis and Haley donors have been calling him since the Iowa caucuses, wanting to back Trump instead.“The fact that Iowa happened to be so strong for the president sent a pretty strong shockwaves throughout the little town of Davos, where many business leaders intentionally sought me out to find ways that they could be engaged and support the president and get on board,” he said.Not all of Haley’s donors are buckling. Along with Americans for Prosperity, they include Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, and Stanley Druckenmiller, a hedge fund billionaire who will co-host a fundraiser for her on 30 January.But some speak of being pressured to abandon Haley and come into the fold. Fred Zeidman, a longtime Haley fundraiser from Texas, told Reuters: “I get calls all the time.”He summed up what Trump’s allies tell him: “We’re going to win. You’re going to lose. Don’t you want to be on the right team?”Those calls are likely to intensify if Trump wins big on Tuesday night. Having realised which way the wind was blowing, hesitant Republicans are rushing to get back in his good graces. It would be no surprise if a procession of senators, representatives, governors and former cabinet officials, along with donors, make a pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to pledge allegiance.Ed Rogers, a veteran of several national campaigns, said: “I would not have guessed this would happen a year ago. But for the last two or three months it’s been clear that none of the other campaigns were going to beat the Trump campaign.”“The only thing that’s gonna keep Trump from being the Republican nominee is for him to step on a banana peel or some act-of-God lightning strike.” More