New Hampshire primary live: Trump says he ‘couldn’t care less’ if Haley stays or drops out of race

Donald Trump made a huge step towards claiming the Republican presidential nomination for the third time since 2016 after winning New Hampshire’s primary by a margin of, as of this writing, about 11 percentage points over Nikki Haley. Nonetheless, the former South Carolina governor says the race isn’t over yet, and plans to make a stand against Trump in her home state, even though polls there show her trailing him. The Democrats also held a primary, which reached an unsurprising result in a roundabout way. Joe Biden won the contest handily over long-shot candidates Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, but only through a write-in campaign organized by outside groups, since his campaign honored recent Democratic rule changes and stayed away from the state. Following Trump’s victory, Biden released a statement saying he believed Trump would be the Republican nominee, and warned that the US economy and democracy are now “at stake”.

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Here’s what else happened tonight:

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• Trump continued to insist victory in the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though it was not.

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• Phillips, who was walloped by New Hampshire Democrats, will continue campaigning for president.

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• House speaker Mike Johnson encouraged his fellow Republicans to unite around Trump.

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• George Santos, the expelled former Republican congressman, turned up at Trump’s election night watch party.

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• New Hampshire’s electorate was quite different from Iowa’s, according to exit polls from CNN.

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Joe Biden said in a statement that Donald Trump won the Republican presidential nomination with his victory in New Hampshire tonight, and appealed to disaffected independents and Republicans to vote for him in November.

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“It is now clear that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee,” Biden wrote in a statement distributed by his campaign. “And my message to the country is the stakes could not be higher. Our Democracy. Our personal freedoms – from the right to choose to the right to vote. Our economy – which has seen the strongest recovery in the world since COVID. All are at stake.”

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He also weighed in on the write-in campaign held unofficially by his supporters in the state, which allowed him to win the New Hampshire Democratic primary even though his name was not on the ballot:

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I want to thank all those who wrote my name in this evening in New Hampshire. It was a historic demonstration of commitment to our democratic process. And I want to say to all those Independents and Republicans who share our commitment to core values of our nation — our Democracy, our personal freedoms, an economy that gives everyone a fair shot — to join us as Americans.

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Donald Trump never misses an opportunity to repeat his false claim that he won the 2020 election, and today is no different.

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“We won in 2016. And if you really remember, if you want to play it straight, we also won in 2020, by more,” he said, to cheers from the crowd. “And we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016.”

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Meanwhile, in Nashua, Donald Trump has taken the stage at his watch party.

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“God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood was playing as he arrived to chants of “USA! USA! USA!” from the audience. It looks like Senator Tim Scott and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy – both Republicans who withdrew from the race and endorsed him – are by his side.

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Dean Phillips took the stage at 8.30pm to congratulate Joe Biden, but said that Biden’s margin of victory was “by no means” what should be expected from an incumbent president.

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“Joe Biden is a good man. He’s a fine man … But I gotta tell you, everyone, he cannot win. The polls are saying he cannot win, his approval numbers are saying he can’t win,” Phillips said.

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“And the fact that an unknown congressman from Minnesota, who two weeks before the election [Phillips actually entered the race in October] said ‘I’m gonna come up here and run for president’ just got 21% that says something, too, my friends.”

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Flanked by supporters and campaign staff, Phillips gave out high fives from the stage. In the days before the vote, Phillips had suggested that winning 20% in New Hampshire would represent success, and he appeared delighted with the result.

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“I’ve had so much darn fun I don’t know what to do with myself,” he said.

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Phillips urged his supporters to “go and have a little fun tonight” – there’s an open bar here. He said he will remain in the Democratic primary race, even though he has missed the filing deadline in states including Florida and North Carolina.

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“We’re going t