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Donald Trump cemented his dominance in Nevada with a commanding victory in Thursday night’s caucuses following a symbolic win in Tuesday’s primary. The race was called for Trump with less than 1 percent of the vote reported at 8:05 p.m. PST – just 35 minutes after caucus sites closed. Trump was ahead with over 97 percent of the vote. ‘If we win this state, we easily win the election this November,’ Trump told enthusiastic MAGA-aligned Republicans gathered at Treasure Island Hotel & Casino to celebrate his victory.
The former president was delighted as he made his way to Las Vegas on Thursday afternoon on the heels of Supreme Court oral arguments where both conservative and liberal justices expressed skepticism over state efforts to keep the ex-president off the 2024 ballot. He spent the entire day ahead of Nevada’s caucuses reacting to those oral arguments, as well as a blockbuster Justice Department report essentially deeming President Joe Biden too feeble to charge with a crime in the classified documents case.
Trump went straight to Treasure Island for his caucus night party after landing in Las Vegas where he was joined by surrogates, allies and caucus captains. Meanwhile, his remaining competitor, former U.N. Amb. Nikki Haley, was not on the caucus ballot. She refused to spend the $55,000 required to participate in the caucus and repeatedly claimed the primary contest was ‘rigged’ by MAGA-aligned Nevada Republicans to hand him the victory and the delegates.
Trump congratulated no one after Haley came in second place in Tuesday’s primary – losing out to the option ‘none of these candidates.’ ‘You know what happened last night? None of the above,’ Trump said, mixing up the day of the primary, which was on Tuesday night and not Wednesday. ‘I would like to congratulate none of the above,’ he quipped to audience laughter. ‘I was one of those none of the aboves – and they won by 44 points.’
Longshot Republican 2024 hopeful and Texas-based businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley was a caucus competitor with Trump. He only held 9 votes at the time the race was called. As Trump prepared to deliver victory remarks, his surrogates and Nevada-based allies descended on a ballroom in Treasure Island. The DOJ revealed in the Thursday report it would not be pursuing charges against Biden because he would likely present himself to a jury ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’.
This renewed calls from Haley demanding the president take a mental competency test to prove he is fit to continue serving as chief executive. DOJ noted in its report that Biden forgot on different occasions throughout the interview the years when he began and ended his vice presidential terms – and didn’t remember what year his son Beau died. ‘Biden took the Documents in his ‘mental primetime.’ He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this, and he wasn’t protected by the Presidential Records Act,’ Trump lamented in a Truth Social pot on Thursday. ‘I was cooperative with the Investigators. Crooked Joe Biden didn’t – Just the opposite, following the usual, corrupt Democrat Playbook. He ‘willfully retained’ documents. This is Scam Justice.’
Several hours before Nevada’s yielded its results, Trump also clinched a victory in the third primary contest of the cycle in the U.S. Virginia Islands caucuses. He earned 73.9 percent of the vote to Haley’s 26 percent – and is expected to take all delegates available from the islands. ‘Great news!’ Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday. ‘As we are landing in Nevada, getting ready to go to Caucus, word just came that we overwhelmingly won the Virgin Islands Caucus, ALL Delegates, with almost 75% of the Vote.’ ‘This has been a very Big Day for your Favorite President, the Republican Party, and Democracy!’ he noted, likely reference not only his win, but the DOJ report and SCOTUS arguments.
Vegas-based Trump Senior Advisor Kash Patel told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that winning Nevada is the ‘key to the west,’ as he drew parallels between the demographics and priorities of voters in the Silver State and in Arizona – a must-win in 2024. Nevada went blue in 2016 and 2020, but Arizona was a red state that flipped blue in 2020, and that Trump and Biden see as a priority to clinch the White House in 2024.
While Tuesday’s primary election was only symbolic after the Nevada GOP decided all the delegates would be awarded in the caucuses on Thursday, Trump still was the biggest winner that night. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley came in second place in the primary behind the option ‘none of these candidates,’ which offered voters a chance to cast their ballot for no one – an effort led by Trump Senior Advisor Kash Patel.
The stunning defeat of Haley proves that Trump supporters are so enthusiastic and mobilized that they were willing to show up twice to symbolically and then actually cast their ballots for the former president. ‘Lined up at the South Reno Caucus to vote for President Trump,’ Former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt wrote in a post to X, formerly Twitter, along with a video of a massive line of people waiting to get into the caucus site. ‘There is snow on the ground, it is a cold night, and people walked for miles to wait in line for an hour or more,’ he noted. ‘Trump is the only person they can vote for, but they want to make their voices heard. Great sign!’
Trump only participated in the caucuses after the GOP said any candidates who signed up for the primary were barred from the contest two days later.
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