COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) Eight years after Donald Trump outlasted a crowded field of Republican presidential candidates with his pugilistic and sometimes vulgar style, the former reality show star has done it again.

The former president is now the last major GOP candidate standing and poised to be the partys nominee for a third time, outlasting all the other hopefuls now that Nikki Haley bowed out Wednesday.

Trump bulldozed a field of more than a dozen challengers, many of them with high profiles, by refusing to appear with them at debates and instead attacking the strongest of them on his own social media site and at large rallies where he spoke uninterrupted for hours . Trump retained the support of many early-state Republican voters who saw him as an incumbent, believe he was wrongly denied the White House four years ago based on false theories of voter fraud, and was unfairly targeted by federal and state prosecutors .

Other voters skeptical of his personal conduct or legal jeopardy supported his policy ideas and believed he would be best suited to defeat Democratic President Joe Biden in November. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime and fierce critic of Trumps personal conduct, endorsed him on Wednesday.

A tranche of them decided that they wanted him to finish the job that he started in 2016, said Roy Bailey, a Texas-based donor who had backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the 2024 White House race. A tranche of them are base that never left him. A tranche of them are people that came back to him as a result of the weaponization of Bidens government against him because they just innately know thats wrong, he said. And it shows how resilient and popular he still is.