Super Tuesday: Trump triumphs on Super Tuesday, blasts Biden’s record

A triumphant Donald Trump has taken to the stage at Mar-a-Lago claiming a near-perfect sweep of Super Tuesday for the Republican presidential nomination.

Following a knockout blow to his lone challenger for the Republican US presidential nomination, Nikki Haley, Trump delivered a 20 minute speech, saying: “We’re going to make America great again, greater than ever before.”

Biden and Trump have each won Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Maine, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, Minnesota and Massachusetts. Biden has also won the Democratic primaries in Vermont and Iowa.

Haley’s strongest performance was in Vermont, where she was essentially tied with Trump in early results. But the former president carried other states that might have been favorable to Haley such as Virginia and Maine, which have large swaths of moderate voters like those who have backed her in previous primaries.

Not enough states will have voted until later this month for Trump or Biden to formally become their parties’ presumptive nominees. But the primary’s biggest day made their rematch a near certainty.

The Super Tuesday primaries are the largest voting day of the year in the United States aside from the November general election.

Voters in 16 states and one territory are choosing presidential nominees. Some states are also deciding who should run for governor, senator or district attorneys.

Trump, 77, who has dominated the Republican campaign from the start despite his litany of criminal charges, swept all but one of the contests before Super Tuesday, winnowing a sprawling Republican field of candidates down to two.

While Trump cannot win enough delegates on Tuesday to formally clinch the nomination, another dominant performance would further pressure his remaining rival.

Tuesday’s contests will award more than one-third of Republican delegates — and more than 70 per cent of the number needed to secure the nomination.

The results are expected to ramp up pressure on former UN ambassador and former South Carolina governor Haley to drop out of the race, she is not holding any public events Tuesday night. And she has no future campaign rallies listed on her website.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, meanwhile, was packed for a victory party that featured hors d’oeuvres including empanadas and baked brie.

A third consecutive nomination for Trump would set up a rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden, 81, in November’s election.

The earliest either can become his party’s presumptive nominee is March 12 for Trump and March 19 for Biden.

Biden is expected to win Tuesday’s Democratic contests easily, though activists opposed to Biden’s Israel policy are calling on Muslim Americans and progressives to vote “uncommitted” in Minnesota in protest.

Biden has already notched several victories, with AP calling Iowa, North Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, Oklahoma, Massachusetts for Biden.

Biden is the oldest president ever and Republicans jump on any verbal slip he makes.

However, his aides insist that skeptical voters will come around once it is clear that either Trump or Biden will be elected again in November.

Trump is now the same age Biden was during the 2020 campaign, and he has exacerbated questions about his own fitness with recent flubs, such as mistakenly suggesting he was running against Barack Obama, who left the White House in 2017.

— with AP