Donald Trump won the Nevada caucuses on Thursday night, positioning him to sweep most, if not all, of the state\u2019s 26 delegates after facing virtually no opposition in a state where he has retained a solid grip on the loyalty of the GOP base and forged strong alliances with the party leaders who shaped rules that favored him in the contest.<\/p>\n
None of the other major candidates chose to participate in Thursday night\u2019s caucuses, where candidates had to pay $55,000 to the Republican Party to compete, and Trump\u2019s strong alliances with Nevada Republican Party leaders helped seal his victory. Trump\u2019s only remaining rival, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, opted not to participate in the caucuses because she argued that party officials had rigged the state\u2019s entire primary and caucus process to help Trump.<\/p>\n
Claiming victory in a brief speech in Las Vegas late Thursday, Trump argued that the country is \u201cdoing horribly\u201d and is \u201ca laughingstock all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not respected even a little bit, and you understand why,\u201d Trump said. Claiming that the United States \u201cdoes not have leadership,\u201d he criticized President Biden, whom he is likely to face in a rematch this fall. \u201cI just want to really thank the great people of Nevada, because this was a turnout. \u2026 The all-time caucus record was broken.\u201d<\/p>\n
He did not dwell on the ongoing primary fight for the Republican nomination but instead looked ahead to the general election in November and the role that the Silver State will play as one of the most competitive battlegrounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we win this state, we easily win the election in November,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to win the election. Go back home, rest and then come back, because we\u2019re going to turn this whole thing around,\u201d Trump continued. \u201cIf we win the state of Nevada, it\u2019s over for them. And our country\u2019s going to be better, greater, bigger, more beautiful than ever before.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a statement addressing the Nevada caucus results, Democratic National Committee Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd argued against that prediction, noting that no one knows \u201chow to lose Nevada like Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHis back-to-back losses in 2016 and 2020 made him the first Republican in decades to lose the state twice,\u201d Floyd said, referring to the general election in those two presidential cycles. \u201cHe and his MAGA minions may be able to rig a caucus for him now, but Trump won\u2019t be able to escape becoming a three-time loser in Nevada this November when voters once again reject his MAGA extremism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevada was the third early-state contest where delegates are on the line, coming after Iowa and New Hampshire, where the former president won decisively and claimed a commanding advantage in the race for the Republican nomination.<\/p>\n
The Nevada Republican Party held its caucuses two days after the state-run primary, in which Trump\u2019s name did not appear on the Republican ballot that was mailed to every registered voter. Haley \u2014 the only major contender still competing against Trump for the nomination \u2014 faced an embarrassing setback in Tuesday\u2019s primary when far more voters selected \u201cnone of these candidates\u201d instead of her.<\/p>\n
Under the state GOP rules, candidates were not permitted to compete in both contests, and the primary was virtually meaningless because the party\u2019s delegates were being allocated to whichever candidate won Thursday\u2019s caucuses. Trump was the only major presidential candidate competing in the caucuses.<\/p>\n
After Haley and several other GOP candidates placed their names on the primary ballot \u2014 and chose to forgo the caucuses \u2014 many of Trump\u2019s supporters chose the \u201cnone of these candidates\u201d option on the primary ballot as a show of support for the former president.<\/p>\n
Haley\u2019s campaign manager emphasized both before and after the caucuses that the former South Carolina governor had not spent any money or effort in Nevada after concluding that the delegate rules were set by the state\u2019s party leaders in a fashion that would be most favorable to Trump.<\/p>\n
During a January rally in Nevada, Trump told his backers to ignore the primary altogether. \u201cDon\u2019t waste your time on primary, waste all of your time on caucus,\u201d he said, adding \u201cthe primary doesn\u2019t mean anything.\u201d<\/p>\n
After her loss in the Nevada primary, Haley responded in an interview on Wednesday that she had not campaigned in the state because \u201cTrump rigged it\u201d and called the state\u2019s system \u201ca scam.\u201d She also noted that one Trump ally in particular, Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald, was indicted in a probe related to Trump\u2019s false claims about the 2020 election. Late last year, a Nevada grand jury charged six Republicans \u2014 including McDonald \u2014 who claimed to be presidential electors in 2020 and submitted certificates to Congress falsely asserting that Trump had won the election in their state.<\/p>\n
In 2016, Trump won the GOP caucuses in the Silver State on the strength of his anti-establishment appeal and his promises to \u201cdrain the swamp\u201d in Washington, outmaneuvering competitors who were better organized, including Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Ted Cruz (Tex.). President Biden narrowly won the 2020 general election race in Nevada, but the state will once again be highly competitive in November.<\/p>\n
Nevada voters had selected its presidential nominees for decades by attending the caucuses held by their respective parties. But after the 2020 elections, Democratic lawmakers pushed to hold a statewide primary and forgo the caucuses, which often drew low turnout and were largely controlled by party activists. Over the objections of Republicans, Democratic state lawmakers passed a 2021 law guaranteeing that every state voter would receive a primary ballot in the mail, as well as options to vote in person or at a drop box.<\/p>\n
The state\u2019s Republican leaders sued the state \u2014 arguing that Democratic lawmakers could not determine their process for choosing delegates \u2014 and won the right to award delegates through their caucus process. The conflict resulted in the confusing situation this week in which GOP voters were able to cast a ballot in Tuesday\u2019s state-run primary but will decide which candidate should get the 26 delegates in the separate Republican Party-run caucuses on Thursday night.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Donald Trump won the Nevada caucuses on Thursday night, positioning him to sweep most, if not all, of the state\u2019s 26 delegates after facing virtually no opposition in a state where he has retained a solid grip on the loyalty of the GOP base and forged strong alliances with the party leaders who shaped rules […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":843,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}