Trump wins most Super Tuesday states, says ‘country is dying’ under Biden
PALM BEACH, Fla. — Donald Trump blasted President Biden after winning most of the Super Tuesday primary contests — saying “our country is dying” under his successor.
The former president, 77, closed in on securing his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination as he notched easy wins over Nikki Haley in at least 12 of the 15 contests.
Trump decisively carried Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, according to rapid-fire projections by the Associated Press — with Haley only capturing Vermont.
Races in Utah and Alaska had yet to be called as of Wednesday morning.
“We have a great Republican Party with tremendous talent and we want to have unity. And we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly,” Trump said in a 19-minute victory speech, which did not mention Haley, to hundreds of supporters in his Mar-a-Lago club’s gilded ballroom.
Trump instead focused on Biden, 81, ahead of an anticipated rematch in November.
“Now we have a very divided country,” Trump said, blaming Biden, who similarly won 15 of his party’s contests on Tuesday — losing only the caucus in American Samoa.
“We have a country that a political person uses weaponization against his political opponent — never happened here,” Trump said, referring to the fact that he faces four criminal cases.
“It happens in other countries, but they’re third-world countries. And in some ways, we’re a third-world country.
Former first lady Melania Trump did not attend Trump’s speech, nor did his daughter Ivanka Trump or son-in-law Jared Kushner. The ex-president’s other adult children Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Tiffany Trump did attend.
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“Our cities are choking to death, our states are dying, and frankly, our country is dying, and we’re going to make America great again — greater than ever before!” Trump told his audience.
During his speech, the 45th president touted various accomplishments of his term — naming the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab states, tax and regulation cuts and tariffs against China — and griped about not getting more acclaim for his management of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a possible second term, “we’re going to close our borders, we’re going to drill, baby, drill, we’re going to get inflation down, and we’re going to make our country greater than ever before,” Trump vowed.
“Inflation is destroying the middle class,” said the ex-president, who also slammed Biden’s management of the US-Mexico border and his actions during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, while arguing major international conflicts would not have occurred on his watch.
“We’ve watched our country take a great beating over the last three years, and nobody thought a thing like this would be possible,” Trump said.
“We wouldn’t have Russia attacking Ukraine. We wouldn’t have Israel being attacked. Iran, as you know, was broke when I was running things, they were broke. They didn’t have money for Hamas,” he said.
“Our poll numbers are so much higher than Joe Biden’s. He’s the worst president in the history of our country,” Trump claimed.
Haley, the 52-year-old former South Carolina governor, did not hold a public event Tuesday night and did not deliver remarks.
Biden also did not speak publicly, but instead released a statement directly attacking Trump.
“Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said.
“Four years ago, I ran because of the existential threat Donald Trump posed to the America we all believe in. Since then, we’ve made enormous progress: 15 million jobs, wages rising faster than inflation, taking on Big Pharma and the gun lobby — and winning. But we have more to do,” the president continued.
“If Donald Trump returns to the White House, all of this progress is at risk. He is driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people,” Biden added.
“He is determined to destroy our democracy, rip away fundamental freedoms like the ability for women to make their own health care decisions, and pass another round of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy — and he’ll do or say anything to put himself in power.”
Trump is seeking a second non-consecutive term as he fends off four criminal cases in unprecedented legal action against a former president — creating an election season unlike any in American history.
Trump also suffered a brutal $83 million defamation judgment in January and a $454 million business fraud penalty in February in a pair of New York civil cases — calling the legal barrage a politically motivated attempt to derail him from retaking the White House.
Trump leads Biden by an average of 2% in national polling, according to the RealClearPolitics average of recent surveys. He’s also ahead in swing states Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, according to the polling site’s averages.
Trump’s first criminal trial is scheduled to begin March 25 over his alleged falsification of business records when paying hush money to women in 2016. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, an elected Democrat, is pursuing a novel legal theory to circumvent statutes of limitation.
Trump also faces a pair of criminal cases — with trials potentially before the November election in DC on federal counts and Atlanta on state charges — for challenging his 2020 defeat by Biden.
The ex-president further faces a trial for allegedly mishandling classified documents in South Florida. The trial was booked to begin May 20, but is expected to be delayed until July at the earliest.
The former president previously trounced Haley in eight states — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, Michigan, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota — and one territory, the US Virgin Islands, while Haley carried only Washington, DC.
