“You can’t let people get away with bulls****,” Donald Trump crudely fumed on Tuesday night in the wake of his eleven-point victory in New Hampshire. Despite his win, the former president was not in a celebratory mood — not with Nikki Haley refusing to surrender. “Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night, she had a very bad night,” he continued. “I’m up, and I’m watching, and I said, ‘She’s taking a victory lap,’ and we beat her so badly.”
Haley’s offense was a banal one. She had not declared victory. Rather, she spun her loss into something resembling a moral triumph that would allow her to continue to campaign against the former president. Indeed, Haley explicitly conceded defeat and congratulated Trump on his success before pivoting back to the campaign themes she had been retailing in the weeks leading up to New Hampshire’s vote. Save for Trump’s deeply insecure response to Haley’s refusal to kowtow, none of this is especially remarkable.
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