--- title: How Donald Trump Steamrolled His Way to the GOP Nomination description: Trump and his allies took back control of the party after nearly losing it. Now with Haley out, he is a step closer to pursuing a draconian agenda. canonical: https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/ copyright: © 2026 TIME USA, LLC. All Rights Reserved. terms: https://legal.time.com/terms-of-service/ license_contact: syndication@time.com author: Eric Cortellessa article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2024-03-06T04:22:22.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-01-19T13:18:49.000Z article:section: Politics og:title: How Trump Steamrolled His Way to the GOP Nomination og:description: Trump and his allies took back control of the party after nearly losing it. Now with Haley out, he is a step closer to pursuing a draconian agenda. og:url: https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt125bbeedfc6e9d12/698a491c47ca381ea73bc152/GettyImages-2046564427.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Donald Trump Holds Get Out The Vote Rally og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Trump Steamrolled His Way to the GOP Nomination twitter:description: Trump and his allies took back control of the party after nearly losing it. Now with Haley out, he is a step closer to pursuing a draconian agenda. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt125bbeedfc6e9d12/698a491c47ca381ea73bc152/GettyImages-2046564427.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Trump Steamrolled His Way to the GOP Nomination > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=e58cba67-3747-4bed-b784-12fe46ca38ce&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: DC Report: The State of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election [Watch (HLS stream): DC Report: The State of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/CQJg0pUX.m3u8) (5:24)  _Published 2024-03-11. TIME Senior Politics Reporter Brian Bennett breaks down the state of the 2024 presidential election and what lies ahead._  by [Eric Cortellessa](https://time.com/author/eric-cortellessa/)  ## Eric Cortellessa Senior Correspondent Updated: Jan 19, 2026 1:18 PM UTCPublished: Mar 6, 2024 4:22 AM UTC TIME Senior Politics Reporter Brian Bennett breaks down the state of the 2024 presidential election and what lies ahead.  by [Eric Cortellessa](https://time.com/author/eric-cortellessa/)  ## Eric Cortellessa Senior Correspondent Updated: Jan 19, 2026 1:18 PM UTCPublished: Mar 6, 2024 4:22 AM UTC Super Tuesday confirmed what’s seemed clear for months: The Republican presidential primary is all but over. With a series of smashing victories, Donald Trump has effectively clinched the nomination. Before all the polls had even closed, the Associated Press called most of the 15 states in his favor. While it will take at least another week for Trump to officially assume the mantle of presumptive GOP nominee, his ascent is a foregone conclusion. His last remaining opponent, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign on Wednesday. All that's left is for the rest of the party to fall in line behind Trump, and for his operation to join forces with the Republican National Committee, a process already well underway. “They call it Super Tuesday for a reason,” Trump said to a crowd of supporters at Mar-a-Lago. “This is a big one.” Trump’s triumph gets him another step closer to reclaiming the presidency and pursuinga draconian policy agenda unlike any the nation has ever seen. He has [vowed](https://apnews.com/article/trump-policies-agenda-election-2024-second-term-d656d8f08629a8da14a65c4075545e0f#:~:text=Trump%27s%20plans%20if%20he%20returns,raids%2C%20tariffs%20and%20mass%20firings&text=NEW%20YORK%20%28AP%29%20%E2%80%94%20A,cities%E2%80%9D%20built%20on%20federal%20land.) to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants; reimpose his travel ban on Muslim-majority countries; purge the federal bureaucracy of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists; force homeless Americans off the streets and into tent cities; and commandeer the Justice Department to exact revenge on his political enemies. It also gets him closer to squashing two of his [four criminal prosecutions](https://time.com/6301112/trump-criminal-cases-status/); as President, he could shut down the federal indictments against him, one for election interference and another for mishandling the nation’s secrets. When Trump left office in January 2021, after unleashing a mob on the U.S. Capitol, few foresaw him engineering a one-sided victory three years later, in one of the least competitive openprimaries in U.S. history. But Trump and his allies did. They had a plan, from the start, to kneecap GOP heretics and scare off potential challengers. Their success was never inevitable. When Trump launched his candidacy in November 2022, he was under a dark cloud. Republicans had just suffered a disappointing midterm cycle, with many of his handpicked candidates losing critical races across the country. The party’s own top brass saw it as a sign to move on from the former President. Not a single member of Congress attended the Trump campaign kickoff at Mar-a-Lago. Trump’s foremost priority was to neuter the man who many presumed his most formidable intra-party threat: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who had just won a landslide reelection. Trump quickly went to work—debasing him with nicknames such as “Meatball Ron” and “Tiny D”; unleashing a brigade of online trolls to mock his campaign missteps; andracking up endorsements from his state’s congressional delegation. The attacks not only undermined DeSantis’s attempt to pitch himself as a more competent version of Trump. They sent a message to would-be rivals: be prepared to face the career-destroying wrath of a MAGA onslaught. Then came the indictments. Trump found a way to benefit from his legal peril by framing his prosecutions as an attack on his supporters. The maneuverenabled him to rise in the polls and raise millions with each new charge. At the same time, he cunningly used his ordeal to box in his GOP adversaries with a Catch-22: If they claimed he couldn’t win the White House because of his legal woes, he characterized them as part of a conspiracy to derail his candidacy. Yet if they defended him, as most did, they only amplified and corroborated his central argument with Republican voters. From then on, Trump barely had to make an effort. He faced a weak field of rivals who were too timid to attack his greatest vulnerabilities. When Trump skipped every primary debate, he made the events seem like little more than auditions to be his running mate.That created an aura of invincibility and inevitability around Trump, leading to endorsements from party leaders such as Montana Senator Steve Daines, who runs the Senate GOP’s fundraising arm, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. By the time Haley took the gloves off, she had already lost Iowa and New Hampshire and seemed to be mounting more of a symbolic anti-Trump mission than a serious presidential bid**.** But as she stayed defiantly in the race, she incurred the virulence of America First adherents. Deploying a similar playbook they used against DeSantis, Trump and his allies branded her as war-mongering neocon—even though her main foreign policy experience was serving as Trump’s envoy to the United Nations—and set out to humiliate her. In her home state of South Carolina, Trump won the primary by 20 points. After securing her first primary contest, in Washington, D.C., the Trump campaign called her “the queen of the Swamp.” Haley’s minor victory came as Trump had already signaled a turn to the general election. He proposed a revamp of the RNC, [installing](https://time.com/6836021/trump-legal-costs-rnc-gop/) new loyalists to lead the organization, including his daughter-in-law Lara Trump and senior adviser Chris LaCivita. Last week, he and Biden visited separate border towns in Texas at the same time, creating a rare split-screen moment that previewed the coming matchup. Trump could not mathematically win the nomination on Tuesday; he needs 1,215 delegates, and fewer than that have yet been afforded. The earliest he could cross that threshold is on March 12, when Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Washington will vote. But with Haley out of the race, the math no longer matters. The only remaining question is whether she will work to unite her supporters around Trump. Over the weekend, she seemed to renege on [a previous pledge](https://time.com/6303628/donald-trump-republican-debate-pledge-signed/) to back the eventual nominee, and sources say she doesn't plan to endorse her former boss. None of that seemed to be on Trump’s mind Tuesday night. Or at least, he wasn’t showing it. He never mentioned Haley's name once. His victory speech focused instead on the last man standing in the way of his return to power. "We've watched our country take a great beating over the last three years," Trump said. “We’re gonna take back our country." ## Transcript Let's talk politics calendar says March but in terms of the 2024 election, it seems we're ready to talk about November been a big month already dominated by super Tuesday Supreme Court rule in the trunk and stay on the ballot Nikki Haley suspending her campaign and by the State of the Union Address we've entered a new state of play. We're already in the general election season with two main candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump. There's a triangle have three main issues that will come up again and again and the gration the economy and abortion Republicans will push the immigration issue hard to potent and fear base symbol of failure. I wish they'd blame on Biden at Biden has tried to push back on that by saying that Republicans are blocking his efforts a border reform specifically to hire more border patrol agents and a phylum officers who can hear the case is faster and sent people back to their home countries more quickly that border package is supported by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, but Donald Trump told House Republicans to block it. So it's dead in the water. Vikings playing Biden for the problem on the border and abiding now blames Republicans and Trump forgot working with him to come up with a solution turn into the economy. Republicans are playing on a general sentiment that the economy feels bad folks are legitimately mad that food prices have gone up in recent years as have some daily expenses. But even though people don't feel it the broad National Economic numbers have been very positive underbite there have been a few layout to Tech and media, but overall unemployment is at record lows. I didn't have an opportunity now to better Trump at the realities that things are not as bad as people feel the US economy is the strongest have any developed country coming out of pandemic inflation has slowed down. The stock market is high and US energy production is up whether or not voters were here. It is a different matter none of Reproductive Rights. The Biden campaign is betting that abortion restrictions put in place after the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade will motivate Democrats and turn out of Bayside and will focus on the recent call. Pulling in Alabama that equates Frozen embryos to children and his friend access to IVF treatments for families wanted to have kids publican's in Alabama have rushed to protect IVF providers in the lake about ruling but it's a powerful Tipping Point for Democrats Biden tries to expand his Coalition and reach out to women in the suburbs with traditionally voted Republican, but have been turned off for the Republican Party since the pre-recorded took away abortion protection. Their big vulnerabilities were both candidates, of course Trump faces ongoing legal troubles trouble be on trial in New York at the end of March on accusations of financial fraud related to covering up hush money payments to keep his alleged affair with a pornstar out of the public eye before the 2016 election Trump also faces charges of refusing to turn classified documents and try to overturn the 2020 election results. Now, this is a big thing for Democrats going after Donald Trump. They say that him coming back to office would be a threat to democracy. Now you have to remember that Trump himself is already set. You would be a dictator on day one. When he said he would reinstate the heart travel ban on several muslim-majority countries that he had put in place in his first term and he is also promised to carry out the largest deportation operation ever in US history. Trump's also said he would use a digital system to punish his political enemies and then providing there's a date polling shows of Voters are concerned about Biden's physical and mental acuity if he does a second term is 81 years old and fighting himself says watch me he acknowledges that is old and jokes about it. And he says that voters should judge him by what has gotten done in office passing infrastructure spending care for veterans investments in microchip manufacturing inside the US and massive investments in climate now Trump himself is only four years younger than buying and 77 and Democrats and pointed to Trump's family name of the campaign Trail as well. Another donor ability for Biden is Israel in the war in Gaza. A vaccine is a problem providing in that it's split up his base in recent primaries, especially, Minnesota this week. Part of the space and voted uncommitted to send a signal to buy them that they're angry about is Clement Israel in his inability to negotiate a cease-fire and get more Aid in the Gaza. But on that issue Trump doesn't offer an alternative for those voters who are unhappy with Vikings traces. In fact Trump has doubled-down on support for the Netanyahu government and it's unclear how that may play out in a general election. I want to see what kind of Olive Branch Joe Biden puts out to Hailey voters who were clearly to satisfy with Donald Trump and see what Joe Biden does to try to bring them into this Coalition. I'll also be watching how RFK Jr. Fair he's going to be on the ballot in a few States and the see if he's able to take those from Joe Biden in a tight race and one of the biggest takeaways from the 2024 election has been how unpopular the choices are both Biden and Trump are underwater and approval ratings. Many many voters have not even tuned in to the race. And those that have for them many are unhappy with those choices that they have an I dread the outcome either way, but I'll be on the campaign trail with Biden. I'll be covering Trump's trials. I'll be flying on Air Force One is buying into the number of stops and keep out of ground States my colleagues and I will do our best to bring you the most important issues of the election unfolds. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/"},"headline":"How Trump Steamrolled His Way to the GOP Nomination","datePublished":"2024-03-06T04:22:22.000Z","dateModified":"2026-01-19T13:18:49.000Z","description":"Trump and his allies took back control of the party after nearly losing it.","url":"https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/","keywords":["Donald Trump"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt125bbeedfc6e9d12/698a491c47ca381ea73bc152/GettyImages-2046564427.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eric Cortellessa","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eric-cortellessa/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt125bbeedfc6e9d12/698a491c47ca381ea73bc152/GettyImages-2046564427.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Donald Trump Holds Get Out The Vote Rally","caption":"Donald Trump Holds Get Out The Vote Rally","creditText":"Bloomberg via Getty Images—© 2024 Bloomberg Finance LP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/donald-trump/","name":"Donald Trump"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/","name":"How Trump Steamrolled His Way to the GOP Nomination"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"DC Report: The State of the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election","description":"TIME Senior Politics Reporter Brian Bennett breaks down the state of the 2024 presidential election and what lies ahead.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/CQJg0pUX/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2024-03-11T16:58:03.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/CQJg0pUX.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/","duration":"PT5M24S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/6853014/donald-trump-super-tuesday-gop-nomination/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```