March 2 - 2024 campaign updates

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday again confused President Joe Biden with former President Barack Obama after attempting to defend his verbal slipups on the campaign trail and claiming they were intentional. 

Earlier in his speech, Trump attempted to defend the other times he has mixed up Biden and Obama in campaign speeches by claiming he had done so intentionally. Democrats have been seizing on Trump’s verbal slipups as Biden faces questions about his mental acuity.

“Every time I do that, or I’ll say our president, Barack Hussein Obama -- now, I do that because, you know, that makes a point. We understand that, right, because a lot of people say he’s running the country. I don’t personally think so,” Trump said.

Trump again claimed him confusing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and GOP presidential rival Nikki Haley was on purpose. 

“I purposefully mix up like a name like Birdbrain — you know who Birdbrain is, right? Nikki — with Nancy Pelosi. I put them in because they’re interchangeable in my mind,” Trump said.

Trump focused much of his second campaign speech of the day on Biden, the US-Mexico border and his legal issues and made only brief mention of Haley, his final primary rival. He gave a very similar speech earlier in the day in Greensboro, North Carolina. 

Trump also touted Argentina’s far-right president, Javier Milei, during his speech.

“Even Argentina, they went MAGA. ... I love him because he loves Trump. When he called, I took his call. Anybody that loves me, I like them,” he said.

Former President Donald Trump will win Idaho’s Republican presidential caucuses Saturday, CNN projects, besting former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in a deep-red state with 32 delegates on the line.  

His win comes three days before 15 states with 36% of the party’s delegates at stake hold their contests — the busiest day on the 2024 nominating calendar.  

Trump’s victory there is a reversal of his fortunes in the 2016 GOP nominating contest, when he lost Idaho to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But Haley’s appeals to moderate Republicans were not a fit with one of the nation’s most conservative states, and in caucuses in which only registered Republicans were allowed to vote.  

Because he is on track to receive more than 50% of the vote, Trump will win all 32 of Idaho’s delegates to the Republican National Convention. The state divides its delegates on a proportional basis only if no candidate tops the 50% mark.  

Trump defeated President Joe Biden by nearly 31 percentage points in Idaho in 2020. 

Former President Donald Trump spent most of his campaign speech Saturday in North Carolina attacking President Joe Biden and made only a brief mention of GOP primary rival Nikki Haley as he looked past Super Tuesday to an increasingly likely rematch with Biden in November.

Fresh off a trip to the US-Mexico border this week, Trump continued to make border security a central part of his reelection pitch. He called the border an “open and gushing wound” and said there was an “invasion” of undocumented immigrants coming into the US. 

“Our border is an open and gushing wound. It's pouring drugs, gangs, terrorists and millions and millions of illegal aliens into our country," he said.

Trump also attacked California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, calling him “New-scum,” and claiming undocumented migrants were “pouring into California.”

The former president spent a significant amount of his speech railing against the 91 criminal charges he faces across four separate cases and attacking the prosecutors who have brought the cases against him. 

Joe Biden and Donald Trump won their respective primaries in Michigan on Tuesday, and now the attention shifts to the Super Tuesday contests.

Here's a look at some of the key primary dates coming up in March:

Access the full 2024 election calendar.

Former President Donald Trump will win Missouri’s Republican presidential caucuses on Saturday, CNN projects, defeating former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the reliably red state. 

His win comes three days before Super Tuesday, when 15 states with 36% of the party’s delegates at stake hold their contests — the busiest day on the 2024 nominating calendar. 

Based on today's results, CNN estimates that Trump will win all 54 of the state’s delegates to the Republican National Convention.

Missouri’s county caucuses elected local delegates to state and congressional district conventions, where they’ll formally allocate the state’s national convention delegates later this spring.

Those local delegates will be bound to vote for presidential candidates based on Saturday’s results.

The state party only released the count of local delegates won by each candidate Saturday, not the number of raw votes each candidate received. A candidate who won a majority of the vote at a county caucus would win all of that county’s local delegates.

Missouri’s GOP caucuses were open to registered voters who signed pledges of allegiance to the Republican Party. 

The Show-Me State was long seen as a bellwether in presidential races. Democrat Bill Clinton carried its electoral votes twice, and Democrat Barack Obama lost the state to Republican John McCain by less than 4,000 votes in 2008. However, it has shifted to the right rapidly since then. Trump defeated Joe Biden by more than 15 points in 2020. 

Former President Donald Trump won all 39 delegates at stake at a Michigan Republican convention Saturday, as officials there sought to move past a leadership battle that has split the state party into rival factions.

The party chairman, former Ambassador and Congressman Pete Hoekstra, presided in Grand Rapids after days of disputes over where the convention would happen — and who would be in charge. 

Republican candidate JR Majewski has dropped out of the race for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, providing a big boost to GOP leaders who are hoping to flip the seat held by longtime Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur this fall. 

Majewski, a controversial candidate and staunch Donald Trump ally, blamed the “deep state” in his announcement on X and insisted that the former president never asked him to get out of the race. 

Drama has been roiling the Republican primary for months. After GOP leaders backed former state Rep. Craig Riedel in the primary, the candidate was caught on tape criticizing Trump. Multiple Republicans then pulled their endorsement, including Ohio Rep. Max Miller and House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik.

Party leaders scrambled to recruit a new candidate who was seen as both sufficiently pro-Trump and a viable general election candidate, and ultimately settled on state Rep. Derek Merin. House Speaker Mike Johnson endorsed Merin last month.

While Trump has not gotten involved in the 9th District primary so far, some of his allies have. Florida Reps. Matt Gaetz and Byron Donalds of Florida and Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance have all endorsed Majewski, who was the losing GOP nominee to Kaptur in 2022. 

House GOP leaders were worried that if Majewski won the primary, it would cost Republicans the seat again this fall. 

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday baselessly accused President Joe Biden of being part of a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America” as he railed against the president’s border policies. 

Trump, who faces federal criminal charges for trying to overturn the 2020 election, baselessly claimed, “Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base power that gives them control for generations.” 

The former president, who faces 91 criminal charges across four cases against him, continued to claim without evidence that Biden was trying to “go after” him. The 2020 rivals are likely headed toward a rematch in this year's general election, and Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden and his family if the former president wins in November. 

“But crooked Joe will not succeed with these plans, and he will not get away with these crimes,” Trump said. Biden, unlike Trump, has not been charged with any crimes.

Trump continued, “He’ll be tried at the ballot box this November, and he will be judged and convicted by the American people.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley touted the results of a New York Times/Siena College poll released Saturday, which showed her defeating President Joe Biden in a hypothetical matchup by 10 points among registered voters nationally, a wider margin than former President Donald Trump’s lead over Biden in the same poll. 

Haley told reporters Saturday following a rally here that the new poll further cements her argument that she is more electable than Trump in a general election matchup against Biden. The Times survey showed her with the support of 45% of registered voters compared with Biden’s 35% in a potential general election. Trump, for his part, earned 48% in a hypothetical rematch against Biden, who received 43%. 

Haley said during her remarks at Saturday’s rally that a double-digit victory in a general election would be a “mandate” for Republicans in Washington and around the country. 

“You win by that much, that's bigger than the presidency. That's House, that’s Senate, that's governorships, that’s school boards, that's finally turning our country around,” Haley said.

Also during her remarks, Haley condemned the Biden administration’s partnering with Jordan to airdrop humanitarian aid into Gaza, criticizing the president for “doing things on his own” and “going against Israel.” She continued to call for the release of hostages in Gaza and for increased focus on Iran’s role in propping up terrorist groups in the region. 

“Now he’s doing things on his own, without standing with the partner that he’s supposed to, is not helping the situation,” she said.