Trump asks for Republican unity, facing fractures and legal, financial troubles

PALM BEACH, Fla. - On a night that brought a near sweep of delegate-rich states and took him to the cusp of the Republican nomination, Donald Trump walked into a ballroom full of adoring fans, meeting their enthusiastic triumphalism with a dark and subdued speech that barely touched on the night’s results.

Instead, in 20 minutes of seemingly unscripted remarks, Trump spoke softly, sounding tired, as he went through familiar campaign themes attacking immigration and President Biden. He did not mention his Super Tuesday rival, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley — who suspended her campaign Wednesday.

“We want to have unity, and we’re going to have unity, and it’s going to happen very quickly,” Trump said. He was in and out of his Mar-a-Lago Club’s ballroom in 22 minutes.

His eagerness to move beyond the primary and consolidate Republican support for what’s shaping up to be an ugly slog to November reflects the challenges confronting him on several fronts. In addition to warning signs from Haley voters and independents that they aren’t eager to back him, Trump is staring down over half a billion dollars in legal judgments coming due within weeks and trying to push back four criminal trials until after the election.

Despite Trump’s commanding performances in the early nominating states, the significant chunk of the Republican primary electorate that voted against Trump is showing stubborn signs that they may not be so quick to join his cause. In preliminary exit polls Tuesday in Virginia and North Carolina — potentially competitive states in November’s general election — most voters who supported Haley said they are not committed to supporting the Republican nominee. On Sunday, Haley said she no longer feels bound by her earlier pledge to support the GOP’s eventual nominee because Trump refused to sign a loyalty pledge or debate other Republican candidates. She is not expected to announce an endorsement Wednesday.

“It’s time for sober minds to prevail and just do the right thing and give everybody an opportunity to unite behind President Trump,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said at Trump’s party. “Sometimes people say they don’t want pizza, they want chicken wings. But at the end of the day, when food’s on the table, you’re going to eat.”

Trump responded to Haley’s withdrawal on Wednesday by falsely claiming that half her supporters were Democrats and taunting her in a social media post: “At this point, I hope she stays in the ‘race’ and fights it out until the end!”

Haley had presented herself as a stronger contender to beat Biden, supported by national polls finding her outperforming Trump in head-to-head matchups with the incumbent president. But to the extent Republican primary voters were considering electability, they had a different assessment: About three-quarters of Virginia Republican primary voters said they think Trump would be likely to defeat Biden in November, compared with less than 6 in 10 who said Haley would, according to early exit polling.

Trump’s emphasis on immigration fit with the top issue identified by 4 in 10 voters in North Carolina and Virginia, followed by about 3 in 10 who named the economy. Around 6 in 10 Republican primary voters in both states said most undocumented immigrants should be deported to the countries they came from, not given a chance to apply for legal status, according to early exit polls. The finding tracked with trends in New Hampshire and South Carolina, earlier contests in which a majority of Republican primary voters also preferred deportation. Trump and his allies have proposed launching a mass deportation operation, including the use of military force and detention camps.

His campaign plans to focus its message against Biden on inflation, immigration and mental acuity — drawing a distinction from attacking Biden for his age, 81, as Trump is 77. The Trump campaign expects Biden to attack him mostly on his roles in helping to end constitutional abortion rights and for his actions leading up to and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“Tonight’s results leave the American people with a clear choice: Are we going to keep moving forward or will we allow Donald Trump to drag us backwards into the chaos, division, and darkness that defined his term in office?” Biden said in a statement Tuesday. “He is driven by grievance and grift, focused on his own revenge and retribution, not the American people. He is determined to destroy our democracy, rip away fundamental freedoms like the ability for women to make their own health care decisions, and pass another round of billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy — and he’ll do or say anything to put himself in power.”

On Tuesday night, the mood inside Trump’s gilded club was jubilant for hours before he showed up after 10 p.m. Fifteen chandeliers dangled over a rowdy crowd, and waiters handed out pigs in a blanket, fried shrimp and empanadas. Hundreds of club members and allies piled into the room, enjoying the open bar and the music of Elton John and other Trump rally classics. Guests walked into the sprawling ballroom through a trio of gold arches where cameras awaited, almost like a red carpet without any fabric.

“It’s kind of like America’s castle,” said Rick Lacey, chairman of the Republican executive committee in Florida’s Brevard County. “Tonight, you can feel like it’s a big tidal wave coming and getting bigger and bigger and bigger. The enthusiasm is growing.”

The crowd roared for Trump, for his family members, for his aides and for other allies who frequently appear on conservative TV networks. VIP attendees included Ike Perlmutter, one of the anchor donors of a new pro-Trump super PAC and a former adviser to Trump on veterans issues, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and former representative Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.). Trump’s adult children were present with the exception of his daughter Ivanka. The former president’s wife, Melania, did not attend.

Trump’s team hopes to cultivate big donors to write checks quickly once he secures the nomination. It is one of many things they must grapple with in the coming weeks, as his aides were scheduled to huddle on Wednesday to discuss the general election. He spent considerable time Tuesday night taking photos with donors, who had seats near the front of the room.

But his dominance inside the GOP belies a range of financial and legal problems.

Trump’s campaign recognizes it needs to spend the next few months raising money to catch up to the Democrats’ considerable advantage. In the latest campaign finance reports available, Biden’s campaign ended January with $56 million in cash, compared with $30.5 million for Trump. The Democratic National Committee, functionally a wing of Biden’s campaign, had $24 million — almost triple the Republican National Committee’s historically low $8.7 million. Biden’s committee also led with unique monthly donors in November and December, overtaking Trump’s formidable online fundraising machine.

Trump is facing a crash crunch in his personal finances. He will probably need to provide more than $500 million this month to post bonds in two cases his lawyers have said he plans to appeal, a fraud case brought by the New York attorney general and a defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll. Carroll accused him in 2019 of sexually assaulting her two decades earlier, prompting Trump to repeatedly denounce her publicly.

Barring a reprieve from a federal judge, Trump has until Monday to put up cash or a bond to delay enforcement of the judgment in the Carroll case while he appeals. Though the penalties added up to $83.3 million, Trump would have to put up at least $91.6 million to account for interest, his lawyers said in a March 4 filing. Most bonding companies also charge a fee, which experts said could mean millions more.

The clock is also ticking on a much larger bond, of over $454 million, that Trump will have to post March 25 barring a reprieve from a five-member appeals court, which is scheduled to consider the case March 18. In that case, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump and his company knowingly passed banks and insurance badly inflated financial figures to get better deals.

In private dinners, Trump has been railing against the size of the judgment as he casts about for a way to cover the cost. His lawyers have made a series of filings in recent days aimed at buying the former president time to secure the amounts or to at least reduce the total he must provide. His lawyers in the Carroll case wrote in a filing that the penalties are “plainly excessive” and that the court should put them on hold until 30 days after the judge rules on post-trial briefs. They have also asked for a new trial.

In the fraud case, brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), Trump’s lawyers argued in court that even the world’s wealthiest people can’t come up with half a billion dollars so quickly. “No one, including Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, has 500 million laying around,” Trump attorney Christopher Kise argued before an appeals court judge last week.

Most Haley voters in North Carolina and Virginia said they would consider Trump unfit to be president if he’s convicted of a crime, though a majority of Republicans in both states said he would be fit. Trump, the first former U.S. president ever charged with a crime, faces four indictments and 91 felony counts overall. He has denied all wrongdoing and faces his first trial in Manhattan, on charges of falsifying business records in connection with a 2016 hush money payment, starting March 25.

More motions are expected in the New York case as Trump’s lawyers continue trying to delay that and the other criminal trials until after the election. Those tactics recently notched several significant victories.

The Supreme Court agreed last week to consider his claim that he is immune from prosecution for his efforts to overturn Biden’s 2020 election victory, which means his D.C. federal trial can’t happen until at least summer. His Florida trial, in which he is accused of retaining classified documents after leaving the White House and obstructing government efforts to retrieve them, is likely to be pushed back, as well. And his Georgia state prosecution over his efforts to block the 2020 election results there has been interrupted by allegations against the prosecutor, Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis.

Still, Trump’s New York trial, if it proceeds as scheduled, will require him to be at the defense table in a courthouse for several weeks as jurors hear about his alleged efforts to conceal a hush money payment during the 2016 election season to an adult-film star who claimed they had an affair. And special counsel Jack Smith, who is overseeing the two federal prosecutions, is pushing to hold the D.C. election obstruction trial and the classified-documents trial in Florida before November.

If elected, Trump could try to appoint an attorney general who would drop the two federal cases against him. While federal officials wouldn’t have the same authority to drop his state charges, Justice Department policy prohibits prosecuting a sitting president. So it’s unclear whether, if Trump were elected and still facing trial in Georgia, Justice Department lawyers might try to intervene on his behalf to stop the trial.

“Donald Trump limps into the general election as a wounded, dangerous and unpopular candidate,” Biden campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon and campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a memo released Wednesday morning. “The Republican nominee is cash-strapped, beleaguered by a host of external issues, and is running on an extreme agenda that is already proving to be a significant liability for key voting blocs that are critical to the pathway to 270 electoral votes.”

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Arnsdorf and O’Connell reported from Washington. Scott Clement, Clara Ence Morse, Perry Stein and Devlin Barrett contributed to this report.