Nikki Haley will suspend her presidential campaign on Wednesday, sources close to the politician told the Associated Press. This sets the stage for a near certain rematch of 2020’s race between Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden.
According to the AP, Haley will make the announcement on Wednesday morning, but three people with direct knowledge of Haley’s decision confirmed the news on the condition of anonymity.
Haley dropping out comes on the heels of Trump’s Super Tuesday victories in the Republican race for all participating states except Vermont, which Haley won. She had also clinched the primary in Washington, D.C.’s Republican race on Sunday.
On Super Tuesday, Biden claimed victory in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia, but lost the American Samoa territory to businessman Jason Palmer.
Trump and Biden now seem to be shoe-ins as the candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively. The two last faced off in 2020, with Biden coming out on top despite Trump’s repeated claims that the election had been rigged. Outrage over the results led to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 by Trump supporters.
Trump, who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021, is running for a second term despite having been impeached twice and indicted in several states on felony counts including falsifying business records, mishandling classified documents, conspiracy and racketeering.
At 81, Biden has been the subject of growing concern over his acuity, though Trump is only four years younger at 77. As Variety‘s Daniel D’Addario wrote in a column on Biden’s recent appearance on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” he is “a creature of Washington who seems fairly unimpressed by the entertainment industry. But that also means that, even in the best of times, it’s been a bit lost on him how best to leverage it for his own purposes.”
