FROM OUR REPORTER
CONCORD (NEW HAMPSHIRE) — Florida governor Ron DeSantis had canceled interviews in the evening. His events web page was blank. In recent days he had begun to say that voters want him to be president in 2028, after Trump, to whom DeSantis ultimately gave his endorsement, in a video with which he withdraws from the Republican primaries. It is the expected epilogue, after numerous errors, of a candidacy that seemed perfect on paper (the New York Post called it “DeFuture”) but which clashed with Trump’s tactics and charisma.
In a selfie taken after Trump’s rally in Concord by Chris LaCivita, one of his key advisors, the tycoon’s team appeared more worried about what to order at the Red Arrow diner than about the strategies of rivals Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis ahead of Tuesday’s primary in New Hampshire. In a pose reminiscent of the Hail Mary Four poster, Trump’s team aims to inflict the decisive blow in this state, the second to vote after Iowa, to close the nomination in South Carolina in a month at the latest. described by LaCivita as Haley’s “Waterloo”.
– The «Team Trump» selfie
Aided by conservative media and the endorsements of many Republican politicians, his advisors intend to make it clear once and for all that Trump is the party’s inevitable candidate for the White House. LaCivita is a former Marine wounded in the Gulf and a veteran of political campaigns. Alongside him, James Blair, who worked for DeSantis; Dan Scavino, former White House deputy chief of staff; Alex Latcham of Iowa, director of primaries in key states who is credited with the triumph at the caucuses. After all, Jason Miller, already with Trump in 2016 and 2020 and then CEO of the right-wing social network Gettr. There is no Susie Wiles, another councilor who was badly fired by DeSantis, but on her social media she greets her exit: “Bye bye”.
Haley, who turned 52 on Saturday, raises the bar: in rallies she notes Trump’s lack of clarity, who confused her with Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, saying that she did not guarantee security at the Capitol on January 6 . «You shouldn’t be surprised when there’s an eighty-year-old in charge. Their mental stability is destined to worsen.” Trump and Biden as two sides of the same coin: it is the harshest attack against the rival who appointed her ambassador to the UN and now calls her “birdbrain” and “Nimrada”, distorting her Indian name ( just as Hussein, Obama’s middle name, emphasized) but which she hesitated to criticize.
Two days before the vote it seems too little, too late. He is at 36% to Trump’s 53% in the polls. He beats her by 65% to 25% among Republicans, she leads by a smaller margin (52% to 25%) among those not affiliated with any party. Haley is targeting independents (40% of voters in New Hampshire) but it is a heterogeneous group: the left-leaning party wanted her to be more decisive against Trump; the part that tends to the right is more anti-party than anti-Trump. The strategists of her inevitability attack her with a pincer maneuver: from her right they practically define her as a democrat; from the left to demotivate the anti-Trumpians they say that you will increase the social security age.