Trump closes in on Biden rematch after New Hampshire win

WASHINGTON

Donald Trump won the key New Hampshire primary Tuesday, moving him ever closer to locking in the Republican presidential nomination and securing an extraordinary White House rematch with Joe Biden.

With votes around 60 percent counted, Trump's winning margin hovered at around 11 percentage points, but his sole remaining challenger Nikki Haley vowed to fight on.

In a rambling victory speech Trump, 77, attacked Haley and said that when the primary contest reaches her home state of South Carolina, "we're going to win easily."

Trump's address was loaded with his trademark ominous warnings about immigration as he continued to lie about winning the 2020 election.

In her own speech, Haley insisted that the race was "far from over" and told supporters that Democrats actually want to run against her former boss, due to his record of sowing "chaos."

"They know Trump is the only Republican in the country who Joe Biden can defeat," Haley, 52, said.

Despite now adding New Hampshire to his previous easy victory in Iowa — and looking near unstoppable to become the Republican candidate in November — Trump kept to his hard-right messaging, with no hint of reaching out to the more moderate voters who supported Hailey.

At one point swearing on primetime TV, Trump said the United States was a "failing country" and claimed that undocumented migrants were coming from psychiatric hospitals and prisons, and "killing our country."

Biden responded saying "it is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee."

"And my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher. Our Democracy. Our personal freedoms — from the right to choose to the right to vote," Biden said in a statement.

Trump won a crushing victory in the first Republican contest in Iowa last week, with Haley a distant third.

What was once a crowded field of 14 candidates then narrowed to a one-on-one matchup on Sunday after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out, following his second-place Iowa finish.

No Republican has ever won both opening contests and not ultimately secured the party's nomination.

Trump did little actual campaigning in New Hampshire. However, his message — a mixture of personal grievance and right-wing culture war firing his base — has delivered the kind of momentum that supporters believe will sweep him back into the White House.