Trump heads to South Carolina looking to reinforce his dominance in Haley's backyard

Former U.S. president Donald Trump, riding high after one of the best days of his campaign so far, will set foot in South Carolina on Saturday for the first time this year to deliver a clear message: The state is his to lose.

Following overwhelming victories in four early presidential nominating contests, Trump has become more emboldened by his staying power as the GOP front-runner. Both the former president and his campaign are more confident than ever that he will clinch enough delegates by mid-March to declare him the presumptive Republican nominee over former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley — months before the GOP national convention in July, multiple Trump campaign advisers tell CNN.

Trump’s South Carolina stop comes on the heels of a busy few days of travel, having appeared in Nevada on Thursday to declare victory in the state’s GOP caucuses before traveling to Pennsylvania, where he addressed a friendly crowd at a National Rifle Association forum on Friday.

In a great day for his campaign, Thursday saw several positive developments for Trump, including the gift of new campaign fodder against U.S. President Joe Biden following the release of a searing special counsel report. While the report didn’t recommend charges against Biden, it included damning language about his mishandling of classified documents and raised concerns about his memory and age.

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Also Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared primed to side with Trump and dismiss an attempt in Colorado to declare him an insurrectionist and remove him for the state’s presidential ballot.

Besides Nevada, Trump also scored a decisive win Thursday in the Republican caucuses in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Haley insists she plans to stay in the race through her home state’s Feb. 24 primary and beyond — buoyed by her enduring fundraising prowess. But Trump and his team view the Palmetto State primary as the place they will deliver the final blow to his last-standing major rival.

That confidence stems in part from Trump’s continued success in internal and public polls, which have consistently shown him with staggering leads over Haley at the national and state levels. But it also comes from the groundswell of support experienced by the former president, his advisers say.

That optimistic view of the remaining 2024 primary contests has led Trump’s campaign to take a less aggressive approach to the South Carolina primary, especially compared with the intensity of their ground game and get-out-the-vote strategies in the earlier nominating states.

And unlike the weeks leading up to the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, when Trump and his campaign relentlessly crisscrossed the states and poured millions into advertising against his rivals, Trump has had a comparably lighter schedule in South Carolina.

Saturday’s rally in Conway, about 15 miles from Myrtle Beach, will be Trump’s first visit to the state in 77 days. He plans to host several more campaign events in the state in the final weeks before the February 24 primary, but his team has had a more laid-back attitude toward the contest as it increasingly focuses its attention on the looming general election rematch with Biden.

Trump’s advisers insist that doesn’t mean he’s taking South Carolina for granted.

“At the end of the day, we can’t take any state for granted. But we see this as a done deal,” a senior Trump adviser told CNN, referring specifically to South Carolina.

The Trump campaign’s ground game efforts in South Carolina this year are also substantially more sophisticated than they were during his initial presidential run in 2016, his advisers say, thanks in large part to the team they’ve built under the leadership of senior adviser Susie Wiles.

The campaign has staff spread out across all of South Carolina’s 46 counties, has dispatched mailers touting Trump’s candidacy and has deployed top state lawmakers and surrogates – including Gov. Henry McMaster; U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, a former presidential rival; and several top members of the state’s congressional delegation – to attack Haley and attempt to embarrass her in her own backyard.

They see the surrogate strategy in particular as core to their goal of attacking Haley as much as possible and pressuring her to drop out of the race. Earlier this month, the Trump campaign held two press conferences featuring a series of his top South Carolina surrogates. The events weren’t well attended, sources familiar with the events said, but were largely aimed at garnering media attention.

“Nikki is persona non grata at this point,” Justin Evans, Trump’s director of special projects in South Carolina, told CNN. “Nikki represents the brand of Republicanism that Trump stands against, everything the George Bush-Karl Rove wing of the party is embodied in Nikki Haley and represented by Nikki Haley. This is their last gasp, and they know that if they lose this, they’re going to have almost an impossible task of regaining any kind of foothold not only in this election, but in the party.”

Trump’s rhetoric during his Saturday remarks will reflect that sentiment. He is expected to strongly attack Haley in his speech and argue that her refusal to drop out of the race is hurting the Republican Party, a senior adviser said.

Trump made similar comments while speaking to reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort on Thursday, hours before declaring victory on the night of the Nevada caucuses.

“I think she hurts herself, but I think she hurts the party, and in a way hurts the country,” Trump said.

“She did poorly in Iowa. She did very poorly in Iowa actually, she came in third place. Ron DeSantis beat her, although you wouldn’t know that if you listen to her speech. She did poorly in New Hampshire. She did poorly no matter where she went,” the former president added.

Those remarks reflect the broader view of Trump’s campaign, which wants him to become the presumptive GOP nominee as soon as possible. According to multiple conversations with Trump’s advisers, they are eager to use the full weight of the GOP infrastructure, including that of the Republican National Committee, to begin pivoting in earnest toward a general election fight against Biden.

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Haley, for her part, seems unaffected by the pressure. A day after losing to “none of these candidates” in Nevada’s nonbinding primary Tuesday, she held a fundraiser and a rally in California, one of several Super Tuesday states she plans to compete in next month, urging voters to stick with her.

In both private and public conversations, Haley has insisted she has no plans to drop out of the race anytime soon — and says she’s committed to competing against Trump through Super Tuesday on March 5.

The former South Carolina governor has also sharpened her attacks on Trump in recent weeks, attacking his mental fitness and lumping him together with Biden as one of two “grumpy old men.”