Three obstacles stand in the way of Donald Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025: Nikki Haley, Joe Biden and their pending accounts with the justice system of the United States. Four, if we count the candidate’s ability to self-sabotage.
In the latest episode of angry self-pride, after winning the Iowa caucuses by a landslide and narrowly winning the New Hampshire primary, Trump threatened Haley’s donors with “permanent” expulsion from his movement. “Anyone who makes a contribution to Sparrowshead – the derogatory nickname by which the former governor of South Carolina is referred to – will, from this point on, be permanently excluded from the MAGA community [of its flagship slogan, Make America great again )”, the former president published on his social network, Truth Social. “We don’t want them, and we won’t accept them, because we put the United States first, and we will always put them!”
Beyond the authoritarian tone it gives off, the positioning denotes concern for the resistance of Haley, the only alternative contender to the tycoon in the Republican primaries, who has pledged not to abandon the electoral race. Although she served in his administration as ambassador to the UN, Haley represents the other Republican Party – the “old guard”, in the words of former candidate Ron DeSantis – and aims to rally the anti-Trump vote of the Republicans more moderate and traditional.
Trump’s discomfort was evident when he took the stage after beating her by just eleven points in New Hampshire. “This is not the typical victory speech,” he said, with an angry gesture. And it had nothing to do with what he had said a week earlier, after sweeping Iowa.
“Trump is completely overturned,” the Republican replied to Fox News. “A president is supposed to serve all the people of the United States and he’s deciding he has a club and he’s going to ban people from entering or leaving.”
After Trump’s latest conviction was announced Friday, forcing him to pay $83.3 million to columnist E. Jean Carroll for defamation, and adding to another previous conviction for sexual abuse and one more for fraud with the Trump Organization, Haley assured that the country must turn a page: “While we are talking about Trump, we are not talking about fixing the border problems.”
The tycoon’s strategy of threatening the donors of his competitor does not seem to have had much effect at the moment; with few exceptions, such as the metal entrepreneur Andy Sabin, who in an interview gave Trump the winner and assured that “Haley must leave”, because, sooner or later, “her money will run out : why should you finance someone who you know has no chance?”.
If Trump manages to win decisively in South Carolina – as indicated by the polls, which give him a 40-point advantage -, the Republican will have a difficult time convincing his donors to continue injecting millions into a campaign without projection.
Although voters, especially moderate Republicans and independents, would be more reluctant to vote for Trump if he is convicted in one of the four criminal trials he faces, in which he is charged with 91 different crimes in New York, Washington, Georgia and Florida .
But a conviction wouldn’t bar him from coming forward: The U.S. Constitution allows a convicted felon to come forward even from prison. Those who do have this ban on the table are the nine justices of the US Supreme Court, who on February 8 have scheduled the initial hearing of the case that will decide whether their ballot can be in the states that have denied them – Colorado and Maine – for his “participation in an insurrection”, that of the assault on the Capitol, on January 6, 2021.
