By JILL COLVIN (Associated Press)
Donald Trump, who had a tumultuous term in the White House and impacted the Republican Party, tested the strength of U.S. democratic institutions and challenged international alliances, will lead the GOP for a third straight presidential election after securing the nomination on Tuesday.
By winning in Georgia, Mississippi, and Washington state, Trump exceeded the 1,215-delegate threshold required to become the likely Republican nominee. He will formally accept the nomination at the Republican National Convention in July, and at that time he may be a presidential candidate and convicted felon, as he faces charges in four separate criminal investigations, with the first trial related to payments to a porn actress set to begin on March 25 in New York City.
Trump's victory in the GOP primary will likely lead to a highly negative general election campaign that will further divide the nation's politics and culture. He will compete against President Joe Biden in the fall, creating a rematch of the 2020 campaign featuring two widely unpopular candidates, an election that few voters wish to experience again.
In a video message to supporters on Tuesday night, Trump described it as a "really great day of victory."
Looking ahead to November, he said, "We now have to go on to victory because our country's in serious trouble," expressing concern about the border, the economy, and the U.S.' lack of respect on the world stage.
He added: "For this evening, last week, and many weeks prior, I want to thank everybody for the tremendous success we've had in this primary. More importantly, we have to get to work to defeat Joe Biden, whom he described as running the worst administration and being the worst president in the history of our country."
In a February poll conducted by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs, 38% of Americans viewed Trump very or somewhat favorably, compared to 41% for Biden.
Trump aims to return to the White House after challenging democratic norms in the U.S. He refused to accept his loss to Biden in 2020, promoting baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud that were rejected by the courts and his own attorney general. His behavior at a rally on Jan. 6, 2021, helped incite a mob that later violently attacked the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden's win.
Only after the insurrection, with storefronts in the nation's capital boarded up and military vehicles parked on streets to prevent further violence, did Trump acknowledge the reality that Biden would be president. He has referred to Jan. 6 as "a beautiful day" and supported those who have been imprisoned for their actions, including those who assaulted police officers, whom he labeled as "hostages" and demanded their release.
During his campaign in 2024, Trump has shown uncertainty about other fundamental democratic ideals. He has not committed to accepting the results of this year's election and, in a December interview on Fox News, hinted at being a dictator on the first day of a new administration. He has aligned himself with autocratic leaders of other countries, particularly Russia's Vladimir Putin and Hungary's Viktor Orbán.
These alliances are different from the usual U.S. approach, which has focused on strengthening democracies abroad. But if Trump is elected, it could change the U.S. support for Ukraine after it was invaded by Russia, and it could have big effects on NATO.
While Trump was in the White House, he often criticized the transatlantic alliance as old-fashioned and expressed regret that some countries weren’t spending enough on their own defense. He has kept making that criticism this year, causing controversy on both sides of the Atlantic in February when he told a rally crowd that he once warned members that he would not only refuse to defend countries that were “delinquent,” but that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to them.
Trump becomes the GOP’s standard-bearer at a time of serious legal trouble, raising the personal stakes of an election that could determine whether he faces the prospect of time behind bars. He faces 91 felony charges in cases that span from the New York hush money case to his efforts to overturn the election and his hoarding of classified documents.
While the New York case is moving forward this month, there’s significant uncertainty about the trajectory of the other, more serious cases, raising the prospect that they may not be decided until after the election.
The Republican Party’s rules for its convention do not address what might happen if the presumptive nominee is convicted of a crime. A conviction wouldn’t bar Trump from continuing to run, though a felon has never been a major party nominee or won the White House.
If he were to win in November, Trump could appoint an attorney general who would dismiss the federal charges he faces, a remarkable possibility that would undermine the Justice Department’s traditional independence from the White House.
In addition to the criminal cases, Trump owes more than $500 million in fines and interest after a judge in New York ruled he had engaged in a scheme to inflate his net worth to obtain favorable financing. He was ordered to pay $355 million, plus interest, in that case — adding to the $88.3 million he already owed writer E. Jean Carroll after he was found liable of defamation and sexual abuse.
So far, Trump has skillfully used the legal cases as a rallying cry, portraying them as a plot hatched by Democrats to keep him out of power. That argument was strong among GOP primary voters, with whom Trump remains a deeply popular figure.
Now, he enters the general election phase of the campaign in a competitive position, with voters frustrated by the current state of the economy after years of sharp inflation, despite robust growth and low unemployment, as well as growing concern about the influx of migrants across the southern border. As he did with success in 2016, Trump is seizing on immigration this year, using increasingly heated and inflammatory language that often excites his supporters.
The 77-year-old Trump is helped by Biden’s perceived weaknesses. The 81-year-old president is broadly unpopular, with deep reservations among voters in both parties about his age and ability to assume the presidency for another four years, though he is not much older than Trump.
Biden is struggling to build the same group of people that helped him become president four years ago, because some in his party, especially younger voters and those on the left, have criticized his response to Israel’s conflict with Hamas.
While these circumstances might benefit Trump, he has difficulties gaining support beyond his core supporters. A significant number of GOP primary voters supported his opponents, such as Nikki Haley, who stopped her campaign after the Super Tuesday elections but has not endorsed Trump. Many of these voters are unsure about supporting him. He needs to change that if he wants to win the states that probably will decide the election, like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin — all of which he lost in 2020.
It’s still uncertain how Trump’s legal issues will affect the general election, especially among suburban voters, women, and independents. Trump’s involvement in selecting the judges who overturned the constitutional right to an abortion could be a problem in swing states, where women and independent voters have a strong influence. He has also made several racist remarks, including the claim that his criminal charges increased his support among Black Americans, which are unlikely to win over more moderate voters.
Still, Trump’s quick journey to become the nominee is the result of more than a year of behind-the-scenes efforts by his team to encourage states to adopt rules for selecting delegates that would be advantageous to him, including pushing for contests where the winner takes all the delegates, preventing second-place finishers from accumulating delegates.
This helped Trump become the presumptive nominee much earlier than in recent presidential elections. Biden did not win enough delegates to officially become the leader of his party until June 2020. In his 2016 campaign, Trump won the necessary delegates by May.
This year, Trump easily defeated his Republican primary rivals, winning the early voting states that usually set the tone for the campaign. The field included various well-known Republicans such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and Mike Pence, who was Trump’s vice president.
At one point, DeSantis was leading Trump in early state polls. But he did not perform well in the national spotlight, failing to meet the high expectations, despite spending $168 million in the campaign and from outside sources. DeSantis left the race after losing in Iowa — a state he had focused his campaign on — and endorsed Trump.
In the end, Haley was Trump’s final rival. She only won the District of Columbia and Vermont before ending her campaign.
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