Trump closes in on Biden rematch after New Hampshire win

MANCHESTER, Jan 24 (AFP): 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 vote counting ongoing, Trump's final margin of victory was unclear, but his sole remaining challenger Nikki Haley was quick to insist she would fight on.
In a rambling victory speech-loaded with his trademark dark warnings about immigration as he continued to lie about winning the 2020 election -- 77-year-old Trump attacked Haley and said that when the primary contest reaches her home state of South Carolina, "we're going to win easily."
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 mental hospitals and prisons, and "killing our country."
With strong turnout in the northeastern state, Haley had hoped for a major upset. But US broadcasters quickly projected her defeat as the first tallies came in.
Trump was already the runaway leader in national Republican polling, despite two impeachments as president, and four criminal trials hanging over him since leaving office.
While Haley repeatedly questioned Trump's mental fitness, her efforts in New Hampshire were not expected to create much more than a speed bump for the populist right-winger's surge to November.
"I think it's a two-person race now between Trump and Biden," Keith Nahigian, a veteran of six presidential campaigns and former member of Trump's transition team, told AFP.
New Hampshire was markedly more Haley-friendly than the states she will subsequently face, should she stay in the race, and continuing into February and South Carolina will be a tough sell.