Former U.S. President Donald Trump won South Carolina's primary, where Republicans voted for their preferred presidential candidate, results showed on Feb. 25.
Trump, who served as president between 2017 and 2021, is currently ahead in the polls to become the Republican nominee for the 2024 U.S. presidential election. If nominated as the Republican nominee, Trump would once again face incumbent U.S. President Joe Biden in the November presidential election.
“This was a little sooner than we anticipated, and even bigger win than we anticipated,” Trump told a crowd at his election night watch party in Columbia shortly after being projected the winner.
Donald Trump also won in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He defeated his opponents, including Nikki Haley, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a former governor of South Carolina.
While the Republican nominee will be officially chosen during the Republican National Convention in July, state caucuses and primaries influence the eventual choice.
The result of the November presidential election is expected to influence the course of Russia's war against Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Dec. 19.
“If the policy of the next president – whoever he is – will be different toward Ukraine, colder or more inward-oriented, if there will be more focus on domestic policy... then I think these signals will greatly affect the course of the war in Ukraine,” Zelensky said.
Zelensky invited Trump to visit Kyiv to demonstrate Trump's ability to end the war with Russia within 24 hours - as Trump previously claimed he would.
Trump has repeatedly said that the war would not have happened if he was still in power in Washington. He would bring it to an immediate end if voted back in because he has what he described as “a good relationship” with Zelensky and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
“He is very welcome to come here, but I think he can not end the war in 24 hours without giving our land to Putin,” President Zelensky previously stated in response to Trump's claims.
Questions remain as to whether Trump's name will appear on certain states' ballots. In December 2023, the states of Maine and Colorado removed Trump from the ballot, ruling that he cannot be considered as a candidate because of the 14th Amendment's “insurrectionist ban” and his involvement in the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Supreme Court is slated to rule on the decision in the coming months.
John Roberts
