ВИБОРЧА ГАЗЕТА

In Border Visits, Biden and Trump Will Focus On Different Priorities

…

US Election Officials Prioritize Security Ahead of November Vote

U.S. election authorities say they are confident they will be able to fend off security threats to the November presidential vote. In Alexandria, Virginia, VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias sat in on a training for election officers, one of several measures to ensure a fair and transparent vote.
…

Republican Trying to Block Party From Paying Trump’s Legal Bills

COLUMBIA, S.C. — At least one member of the Republican National Committee is working to slow Donald Trump’s attempted takeover of the organization by pushing to keep the committee neutral until Trump is officially the presidential nominee and avoid picking up his legal bills.

Two draft resolutions are being circulated by Henry Barbour, a national committeeman from Mississippi, for consideration at the RNC’s upcoming March meeting in Houston. Barbour said support for the resolutions among RNC members is growing but he does not yet have the needed co-sponsors, and any resolutions would ultimately be nonbinding.

The effort comes after Trump last week publicly called to replace the RNC’s current leaders and install one of his senior campaign advisers and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump in top roles. Lara Trump suggested earlier in the week that GOP voters would support the committee paying her father-in-law’s legal bills as he faces a raft of criminal and civil indictments.

Trump senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, whom the former president wants to install as the party’s chief operating officer, told reporters Friday night that the RNC would not pay Trump’s legal bills.

In a statement on Saturday, LaCavita said “the primary is over and it is the RNC’s sole responsibility to defeat Joe Biden and win back the White House.”

“Efforts to delay that assist Joe Biden in the destruction of our nation,” he said. “Republicans cannot stand on the sidelines and allow this to happen.”

One of Barbour’s proposed resolutions says that the RNC and its leadership will stay neutral throughout the presidential primary and not take on additional staff from any of the active campaigns until a candidate has the needed delegates to be the nominee.

The second resolution says the organization will not pay the legal bills of any candidate for federal or state office but will instead focus its spending on efforts directly related to the 2024 election.

“The RNC has one job. That’s winning elections,” Barbour said. “I believe RNC funds should be spent solely on winning elections, on political expenses, not legal bills.”

The RNC was paying some of Trump’s legal bills for New York cases that started while he was president, The Washington Post reported. But current RNC Chairperson Ronna McDaniel said in November 2022 that the RNC would stop p

aying once Trump became a candidate again and started running for the 2024 presidential election.

Trump is spending millions on lawyers in civil cases and four criminal cases, but he also has legal debts that top half a billion dollars.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is Trump’s last major challenger in the GOP primary, said a family member or campaign manager should not be leading the RNC.

“I would hope that the people in the RNC know that they have a responsibility, a responsibility to put in people in the RNC who are going to look out in the best interest of all of the Republican Party, not just one person,” Haley said.

The resolutions were first reported by The Dispatch on Saturday. 
…

Former President Trump Beats Former UN Ambassador Haley in Her State

Former US President Donald Trump won the Republican Presidential Primary in the Southern state of South Carolina on Saturday, defeating former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in her home state. But Haley vowed to continue her campaign through Super Tuesday in early March, when a block of US states will have their say in who runs against President Joe Biden in November. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
Camera: Henry Hernandez and Ostap Yarysh
…

Trump Wins South Carolina Primary; Haley Heads to Michigan

charleston, south carolina — Former U.S. President Donald Trump won South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday, beating former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in her home state and further consolidating his path to a third straight GOP nomination. 

Trump has now swept every contest that counted for Republican delegates, with wins in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The former president’s latest victory will likely increase pressure on Haley, who was Trump’s representative to the U.N. and South Carolina governor from 2011 to 2017, to leave the race. 

Haley has vowed to stay in the race through at least the primaries on March 5, known as Super Tuesday, but was unable to dent Trump’s momentum in her home state despite holding far more campaign events and arguing that the indictments against Trump will hamstring him against U.S. President Joe Biden in the fall. 

South Carolina’s first-in-the-South primary has historically been a reliable bellwether for Republicans. In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has gone on to be the party’s nominee. The lone exception was Newt Gingrich in 2012. 

Haley said in recent days that she would head straight to Michigan for its Tuesday primary, the last major contest before Super Tuesday. She faces questions about where she might be able to win a contest or be competitive. 

Trump and Biden are already behaving like they expect to face off in November. 

Trump and his allies argue Biden has made the U.S. weaker and point to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Trump has also repeatedly attacked Biden over high inflation earlier in the president’s term and his handling of record-high migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Trump has questioned — often in harshly personal terms — whether the 81-year-old Biden is too old to serve a second term. Biden’s team in turn has highlighted the 77-year-old Trump’s own flubs on the campaign trail. 

Biden has stepped up his recent fundraising trips around the country and increasingly attacked Trump directly. He’s called Trump and his “Make America Great Again” movement dire threats to the nation’s founding principles, and the president’s reelection campaign has lately focused most of its attention on Trump, suggesting he’d use the first day of a second presidency as a dictator and that he’d tell Russia to attack NATO allies who fail to keep up with defense spending obligations mandated by the alliance. 

Haley also criticized Trump on his NATO comments and also for questioning why her husband wasn’t on the campaign trail with her — even as former first lady Melania Trump hasn’t appeared with him. Major Michael Haley is deployed in the Horn of Africa on a mission with the South Carolina Army National Guard. 

But South Carolina’s Republican voters line up with Trump on having lukewarm feelings about NATO and continued U.S. support for Ukraine, according to AP VoteCast data from Saturday’s primary. About 6 in 10 oppose continuing aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Only about a third described America’s participation in NATO as “very good,” with more saying it’s only “somewhat good.” 

Haley has raised copious amounts of campaign money and is scheduled to begin a cross-country campaign swing on Sunday in Michigan ahead of Super Tuesday on March 5, when many delegate-rich states hold primaries. 

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham complimented Haley while speaking to reporters at Trump’s election night party in Columbia but suggested it was time for her to drop out. 

“I think the sooner she does, the better for her, the better for the party,” Graham said. 

Biden won South Carolina’s Democratic primary earlier this month and faces only one remaining challenger, Dean Phillips. The Minnesota Democratic congressman has continued to campaign in Michigan ahead of the Democratic primary there, despite having little chance of actually beating Biden. 

Though Biden is expected to cruise to his party’s renomination, he faces criticism from some Democrats for providing military backing to Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The war could hurt the president’s general election chances in swing states such as  Michigan, which is home to a large Arab American population. 
…

Trump Enters South Carolina’s Republican Primary Looking to Embarrass Haley

CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA — Former U.S. President Donald Trump is looking to win his fourth straight state primary Saturday over Nikki Haley in South Carolina, aiming to hand a home-state embarrassment to his last remaining major rival for the Republican nomination.

Trump went into the primary with a huge polling lead and the backing of the state’s top Republicans, including U.S. Senator Tim Scott, a former rival in the race. Haley, who served as United Nations ambassador under Trump, has spent weeks crisscrossing the state that twice elected her governor warning that the dominant front-runner, who is 77 and faces four indictments, is too old and distracted to be president again.

In all but one primary since 1980, the Republican winner in South Carolina has gone on to be the party’s nominee. But Haley has repeatedly vowed to carry on if she loses her home state, even as Trump positions himself for a likely general election rematch against President Joe Biden.

Trump’s backers, including those who previously supported Haley during her time as governor, seemed confident that the former president would have a solid victory Saturday.

“I did support her when she was governor. She’s done some good things,” Davis Paul, 36, said as he waited for Trump at a recent rally in Conway. “But I just don’t think she’s ready to tackle a candidate like Trump. I don’t think many people can.”

Trump has swept into the state for a handful of large rallies in-between fundraisers and events in other states, including Michigan, which holds its GOP primary Tuesday.

He has drawn much larger crowds and campaigned with Gov. Henry McMaster, who succeeded Haley, and Scott, who was elevated to the Senate by Haley.

Speaking Friday in Rock Hill, Trump accused Haley of staying in the race to hurt him at the behest of Democratic donors.

“All she’s trying to do is inflict pain on us so they can win in November,” he said. “We’re not going to let that happen.”

In some of those rallies, Trump has made comments that handed Haley more fodder for her stump speeches, such as his Feb. 10 questioning of why her husband — currently on a South Carolina Army National Guard deployment to Africa — hadn’t been campaigning alongside her. Haley turned that point into an argument that the front-runner doesn’t respect servicemembers and their families, long a criticism that has followed Trump going back to his suggesting the late Sen. John McCain, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, wasn’t a hero because he was captured.

That same night, Trump asserted that he would encourage countries like Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” against NATO member countries who failed to meet the transatlantic alliance’s defense spending targets. Haley has been holding out that moment as evidence that Trump is too volatile and “getting weak in the knees when it comes to Russia.”

After one of Haley’s events, Terry Sullivan, a U.S. Navy veteran who lives in Hopkins, said he had planned to support Trump but changed his mind after hearing Haley’s critique of his NATO comments.

“One country can say whatever it wants, but when you have an agreement, among other nations, we should join the agreements of other nations, not just off on our own,” Sullivan said. “After listening to Nikki, I think I’m a Nikki supporter now.”

Haley has made an indirect appeal to Democrats who in large numbers sat out their own presidential primary earlier this month, adding into her stump speech a line that “anybody can vote in this primary as long as they didn’t vote in the February 3 Democrat primary.”

Some of those voters have been showing up at her events, saying that although they planned to vote for Biden in the general election, they planned to cross over to the GOP primary Saturday to oppose Trump now.

In any other campaign cycle, a home state loss might be detrimental to a campaign. In 2016, Sen. Marco Rubio dropped out shortly after losing Florida in a blowout to Trump, after his campaign argued the political winds would shift in his favor once the campaign moved to his home state.

And Haley’s campaign can’t name a state in which they feel she will be victorious over Trump.

But in a speech this week in Greenville, Haley said she would stay in the campaign “until the last person votes,” arguing that those whose contests come after the early primaries and caucuses deserved the right to have a choice between candidates.

Haley also used that speech — which many had assumed was an announcement she was shuttering her campaign — to argue that she feels “no need to kiss the ring,” as others had, possibly with prospects of serving as Trump’s running mate in mind.

“I have no fear of Trump’s retribution,” Haley reiterated. “I’m not looking for anything from him. My own political future is of zero concern.”
…

Haley Seeks Key Win in Home State Against Front-Runner Trump

Georgetown, South Carolina — The two-person contest for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination comes to South Carolina on Saturday, where former governor and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley is looking for her home state to deliver her first win of the election season over former President Donald Trump.

Polling shows Trump holds a strong lead over Haley, after securing wins in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary in January. A Suffolk University/USA Today poll of South Carolina voters conducted last week found that 63% of the state’s voters prefer the former president.

Earlier this week, Haley vowed to continue on to Super Tuesday, the primary day in early March when a diverse set of 15 states will vote for their choice of a Republican candidate to go up against President Joe Biden in the November general election.

But at a campaign event Friday, Donald Trump Jr. told reporters Haley’s vow was a calculated decision.

“It’s just political theater, but it’s the political theater designed to hurt Donald Trump and the Republican chances in November. She’s saying that she’s going to remain until Super Tuesday. I’m sure she will. She won’t win any states on Super Tuesday either,” he said.

Trump holds 63 delegates going into Saturday’s vote, while Haley holds 17. A candidate needs 1215 delegates to secure the nomination, with most of the delegates still to be awarded.

Haley told voters at a Georgetown, South Carolina, rally on Thursday that she is the better choice in the general election, arguing American voters are concerned about the age and abilities of both Trump and Biden.

“Are we really saying the best we can do is two guys in their 80s?” Haley said. “Because we need someone who can serve eight years uninterrupted, day and night, and focus on what’s going to get solutions for the American people.”

Haley is Trump’s only remaining rival for the nomination. Some voters who chose Trump in the last election said they are turning to Haley now as an alternative to the former president’s rhetoric.

“Nikki Haley is a lot less volatile than he is — he has a very volatile personality,” Kat Loftus, a voter from Georgetown, told VOA. “I think she would do a much better job of listening to people that are different from her and negotiating and getting things accomplished to unite our country.”

Loftus said border security and immigration are her top concerns this election year and Haley’s experience as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations would be useful as she negotiated with Mexico’s president on border security.

In her well-attended speech, Haley also argued Trump has harmed the global reputation of the United States with his support for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Donald Trump is siding with a thug,” Haley said. “Half a million people have been wounded or killed because Putin invaded Ukraine. Donald Trump is siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents.”

Tee Miller, a South Carolina voter, agreed, saying the former president had his chance during his term.

“Everyone thinks he’s going to bring this change, but he had the opportunity before and didn’t really make the change. And he’s also brought on new baggage,” Miller said.

Flo Phillips did change her mind. She voted for Trump in the last election but said she is now voting for Haley.

“I can be proud of her when she’s talking. She’s not saying horrible things about everybody. She seems to be a real smart person,” Phillips told VOA.

Trump campaign focused on Biden

But Haley was barely mentioned Friday by Trump Jr. as he rallied voters in Charleston, South Carolina.

“We can get our country back to where it needs to be,” Trump Jr. told a small group of voters, alleging Biden is controlled by radical Leftists. “No one actually thinks that Joe Biden is coming up with policy, right?”

Rosie, a South Carolina voter who declined to provide her last name, agreed, saying that Biden has torn down democratic values during his term in office. She said she did not consider voting for Haley.

“She was on record saying that she would never run if Trump was running. So that’s just indicative of her flip flopping on what she says she’s going to do and then what she does. She’s proven that her track record is, ‘I’ll say what I need to get elected and then do the opposite,'” she told VOA.

“Nikki is a good lady,” South Carolina voter Todd, who declined to provide his last name, said he appreciated her leadership in 2015 when a racist gunmen killed eight people at the Charleston AME church. Todd, who described himself as a big fan of Trump Jr.’s political podcasts, said the timing of Haley candidacy wasn’t right. “With all that’s going on in our country, it’s just not the right time.”

Carolyn Corcoran, a voter and single mother worried about the rising cost of living, said Haley is too politically entrenched in Washington. She said she likes Trump because he puts people ahead of politics.

“The way they’re attacking Trump by using the law as a political weapon — it’s really heartbreaking for someone who protected people for years and enforced the laws the way they should be enforced,” said Corcoran, who retired from law enforcement after 30 years.

“To see our whole country, the attorneys general using the law to try to get at Trump, when he’s never done anything that anyone else hasn’t done. They just want to weaponize the law against him.”  
…