Nikki Haley won the first, and probably only, electoral challenge for the nomination as the Republican candidate in the presidential race, beating Donald Trump with 63% of the votes and securing 19 of the 2,429 GOP delegates.
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Nikki Haley wins the Republican primaries in Washington DC
The victory came from Washington DC not as a surprise given that The Donald in the super democratic capital is not much loved even by the 22 thousand registered Republican voters. In 2020 he won the nomination only because he had no rivals, and in 2016 he came third.
The tycoon reacted to the news of her rival’s first victory by insulting her in a post on his social media Truth Social, in which she called her “chicken brain“.
“I have deliberately stayed away from Washington, the ‘swamp’ – Trump wrote – which brings very few delegates and no advantages. ‘Chicken Brain’ has spent all his time, money and efforts there. The really big numbers will come on Super Tuesday.”
In recent days the tycoon had declared that in the event of defeat in the Washington DC primaries, if re-elected president, he would ban entry to the White House to all lobbyists who did not vote for him. And that a possible victory for Haley would be a ‘crowning as queen “of the Washington lobbyists and insiders who want to protect the failing status quo.”
Read also: All the nicknames that Donald Trump has given to his opponents
Haley declares she will not support Trump
Nikki Haley underlined that she was the first woman in the history of the Republican Party to win a primary election. Also, she declared that she no longer felt bound by the commitment she made with the Republican National Committee (RNC) to support former President Trump if he became the party’s candidate.
“The RNC is no longer the same RNC,” the former governor of South Carolina declared on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’. “I will make the decision I want to make.”
This statement from Haley is an abrupt change from the commitment she had previously made to support the Republican candidate. In order to participate in the primary debates, the RNC itself requires candidates to sign a loyalty pledge. A commitment that Trump had refused to sign, not participating in any of the debates.
During the first GOP debate, however, Haley was among the few candidates to declare that she would vote for Trump even if he were convicted.
Low odds for Haley in the republican race
What caused it to make this abrupt change to the point of declaring that the RNC is now something different were the resignations of its leaders, including President Ronna McDaniel.
And the fact that Trump is trying to install his daughter-in-law, a senior advisor to his election campaign, and the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party at the top of the committee. Haley accused Trump of wanting to turn the party into a “cash fund” for his election campaign.
At this point in the campaign, having won only one race in the Republican race, Haley approaches a Super Tuesday where she is the underdog in every state. And, these days she is sending mixed messages about what she will do when, and if, she will withdraw.
Within a few hours, the former ambassador to the United Nations stated that her campaign is not “anti-Trump”. But then declared that she wanted to withdraw her support for a possible nomination of a Republican candidate who is not she.
