“I stand before you today not only as your past and future president, but as a proud political dissident,” Trump told an adoring CPAC crowd at a suburban Washington hotel where he clinched his record 7th straw poll victory before trouncing Haley in South Carolina.
Fresh from humiliating Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina, Donald Trump is pivoting from primary candidate to a keenly familiar role: presumptive Republican presidential nominee itching for a rematch with Joe Biden.
Trump tightened his grip on his third straight GOP nomination with a crushing win over Haley in the Palmetto State on Saturday night, his fifth straight victory to open the 2024 primary election season.
And during a whirlwind day, Trump jetted from the CPAC confab where he hob-nobbed with conservatives in the nation’s capital to the frontlines of the campaign where he courted Southern voters. Throughout, America’s 45th president made a clear pivot to the general election and the themes he hopes will return him to the White House.
Trump painted himself as a persecuted political opposition leader facing more than 90 felony charges levied by Democrat-led prosecutors but nonetheless determined to restore security and prosperity to an America wrecked by Joe Biden.
“For hard-working Americans. Nov. 5 will be our new liberation day — but for the liars and cheaters and fraudsters and censors and impostors who have commandeered our government, it will be their judgment day,’ he declared.
Trump has the luxury to pivot to the fall election in part because his lead in the Real Clear Politics polling average in the rest of the country stands at 57.9%. He could very well sew up the necessary 1,215 delegates need to win the nomination by late March.
Trump’s CPAC speech — like his victory address in South Carolina — reprised his favorite policies from his improbable 2016 run: invigorating an economy stunted by Democrats bloated federal spending, making cities safe from crime and securing a lawless border.
“We’re going to have to do this fast because no country can sustain what’s happening in our country,” he said Saturday, addressing the crisis of illegal migration just hours after a Venezuelan man who crossed America’s border illegally and then got parole from the Biden administration was arrested in the grisly murder of a University of Georgia nursing students.
