Voters are headed to the polls in 15 U.S. states and American Samoa on Tuesday in the biggest day of balloting in presidential primary elections, with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump expected to roll to more victories and an inevitable face-off in the November national election.
Biden, who defeated Trump’s 2020 reelection bid, is facing only token opposition in the Democratic primaries on what is known on the U.S. political calendar as Super Tuesday. Even so, Biden has fallen a few percentage points behind Trump in recent national polls and in several political battleground states that likely will determine the national outcome.
Trump on Saturday captured more delegates to this summer’s national party nominating convention in Republican contests in Michigan, Idaho and Missouri. He is predicted to cement his lead in the Tuesday voting over his remaining challenger, Nikki Haley, his one-time United Nations ambassador and a former South Carolina governor.
Trump faces an unprecedented four criminal indictments encompassing 91 charges, with the first trial scheduled in three weeks on charges that he tried to hide a hush money payment to a porn star ahead of his successful 2016 presidential campaign. But he has yet to lose a state in the 2024 campaign to Haley and lately has been all but ignoring her candidacy and instead focusing on Biden.
At a rally Saturday night in the mid-Atlantic state of Virginia, Trump called for a "landslide that's too big to rig" in the primary elections on Tuesday to send a “signal” to Biden.
“You know they have, like, the standard line: 'Donald Trump is a threat to democracy.' Some advertising agency wrote that down,” Trump said. "I'm not a threat. I'm the one that's ending the threat to democracy."
Days after both Trump and Biden visited the U.S.-Mexico border to offer their plans to control the influx of migrants, Trump renewed his attacks against Biden, ignoring the incumbent’s call for passage of tougher immigration controls as proposed by a bipartisan group of senators, a Democrat, a Republican and an independent.
"Let's face it: This country is a mess,” Trump said. “We got 15 [million] to 16 million people came in, and they came in from prisons and jails. They come in from mental institutions and insane asylums. They're terrorists. They're drug dealers. We are really going to be a very different country.”
"We have to have it stopped. With your help, we will win big on Super Tuesday,” he said. “And this November, Virginia is going to tell crooked Joe Biden, you're fired. You're fired! Get out of here! Get out of here! Get out of the White House.”
Despite her early party primary and caucus losses to Trump and the prospect of more on Tuesday, Haley told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” show on Sunday she has no intention of dropping out of the race.
“As long as we are competitive, as long as we are showing that there is a place for us, I'm going to continue to fight,” she said.
Haley, who once signed a pledge to support the Republican presidential nominee, hedged on whether she will honor that commitment if Trump wins the party’s nomination.
“I think I'll make what decision I want to make,” she said. “I have always said that I have serious concerns about Donald Trump. I have even more concerns about Joe Biden.”
