Micheal Chukwuebuka, Reporting
FORMER South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is set to drop out of the 2024 presidential race Wednesday after losing every state but one, Vermont, in Super Tuesday’s primary contests.
An aide to Haley confirmed to our source, NBC News.
Haley will announce she’s ending her campaign in remarks later today, the source said.
Haley’s move cedes the Republican nomination to former President Donald Trump and effectively kicks off the general election, with Trump and President Joe Biden taking unofficial command of their parties early in primary season after a string of victories.
The ball is in his court, a source close to the Haley campaign told NBC News, referring to the former president.
Stonix News gathered from NBC News, that, Haley won’t announce an endorsement on Wednesday; Instead, she will encourage Trump, who is close to having the delegates needed to win the GOP nomination, to earn the support of Republicans and independent voters who backed her.
NBC News projected a near-sweep for Trump in Tuesday’s contests, with blowout races in every state except blue Vermont, where Haley won the state’s delegates by a more than 4 percentage point margin with about 96% of the expected votes in.
A hand-picked member of Trump’s Cabinet from 2017 to 2018, Haley was the first major Republican to launch a challenge against the former president in February 2023.
But while Haley’s Trump criticism tapped into a slice of online donors who fueled her campaign, and her support rose, she was unable to pull within even single digits of Trump in almost all the Republican nominating contests.