Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), a former 2024 campaign rival to former President Donald Trump, endorsed the 45th president on Friday night at a New Hampshire event — marking a brutal, even possibly fatal, blow to the campaign of former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), who first appointed Scott to the U.S. Senate in 2012.
Scott enthusiastically announced his support for Trump at the Concord, New Hampshire, event.
South Carolina Senator @votetimscott endorses Donald J. Trump for President! pic.twitter.com/9ehXhLFaSH
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) January 20, 2024
By the end of his remarks, Scott had the Trump supporters engaged and saying the former president’s name to finish his sentences:
We need a president who will close our southern border today: We need Donald Trump. We need a president who will unite our country: We need Donald Trump. We need a president who will protect your Social Security and my mamma’s Social Security: We need Donald Trump. We need a president today who will stop the crime and recklessness in the streets. We need a president who will restore law and order: We need Donald Trump. We need a president who will lower our taxes and not raise our taxes: We need a president like Donald Trump.
We need a president who understands the American people are sick and tired of being sick and tired: We need [Donald Trump]. We need a president our foreign adversaries are afraid of and our allies respect: We need [Donald Trump]. You see, we need a president who doesn’t see black or white. We see a president who sees Americans as one American family: We need [Donald Trump]. And that’s why I came to the very warm state of New Hampshire to endorse the next president of these United States: President Donald Trump.
Trump called Tim Scott a “very, very good man and a very respected man” following the endorsement and thanked him for his trip from Washington, DC, to the Granite State.
“Having his endorsement means a lot. We have tremendous numbers of endorsements; they’re pouring in right now, but having Tim is very important,” he added.
The 45th now has endorsements from some two dozen U.S. senators and five former 2024 Republican presidential candidates, including Scott, Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), 38-year-old entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, Radio host Larry Elder, and businessman Perry Johnson.
“Now is the time … for the Republican Party to unify — we have to unify. We have to go after these crazy people that we’re dealing with,” Trump said on Friday.
“Instead of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars attacking Trump and others, we need to come together and focus all our energy and resources in defeating crooked Joe Biden — our worst president,” he added.
President Donald Trump and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in Bedminster, NJ, on Aug. 11, 2017. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Trump contended, “Haley has made an unholy alliance with RINOs, Never Trumpers, Americans for ‘no’ Prosperity … globalists and radical-left communists to get liberals and Biden supporters to vote for her in the Republican primary.”
Haley, who is Trump’s top competition in Granite State if polls are correct, appointed Scott to the U.S Senate in 2012 as former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) left the body to head up the Heritage Foundation.
But their relationship seemed to sour during the primary, with ABC News noting Haley “cast the first stone” at a Republican debate in late September.
“She drew first blood,” Scott told Fox News’s Neil Cavuto. Per the outlet, “She started off by making it personal. I, frankly, did not have a negative comment about her.”