Donald Trump has effectively clinched the GOP nomination for president for the third straight cycle, meaning Republicans could well have a convicted felon at the top of their ticket heading into the November election.

Late Tuesday, Trump had won 11 contests of the 16 taking place across the country to Haley’s one, in Vermont.

Though Trump still needs to win 1,215 delegates to become the presumptive nominee, that task now appears to be little more than a formality and will likely take place either next week or the week after.

Trump, while claiming at the start of his 18 minutes of remarks from his South Florida country club home that his Super Tuesday wins were unprecedented, proceeded to give a rambling, low-energy speech that hit his favorite lies about immigration, the size of his tax cuts, China paying billions in tariffs ― but almost nothing about the state of the Republican primaries.

“We want to have unity, and we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly,” apparently alluding to when he would wrap up the nomination.

The coup-attempting former president has been the favorite to win again for almost the entire period since the 2022 midterms, as Republican primary voters largely bought into his lies about the 2020 election having been “stolen” from him.

Almost all of his rivals for the 2024 slot refused to challenge him on that point, and in doing so boxed themselves into defending him after state and federal prosecutors indicted him for his efforts to remain in power despite having lost reelection ― efforts that culminating in the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-effectively-clinches-gop-presidential-nomination_n_65d7ca27e4b0cc1f2f7b370e