With five days left until the New Hampshire primary, Donald Trump and his allies are stepping up their efforts to muscle Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis out of the Republican presidential race by casting Trump’s nomination as inevitable.

The strategy reflects a desire to end the race quickly and avoid an extended and expensive battle for delegates heading into Super Tuesday on March 5.

Trump is facing 91 criminal charges in four jurisdictions, as well as two costly civil trials, where he has used voluntary appearances at New York courthouses as public relations and fundraising vehicles. But February offers him few such opportunities, meaning he would need to rely on his political strength alone to generate momentum for Super Tuesday, when voters in 16 states and territories will cast ballots for the nomination.

In New Hampshire, Trump began attacking Haley with paid advertising weeks ago, and intensified the onslaught more recently with sharper personal criticisms and campaign statements.

On Tuesday, he went after Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, on his social media website, using her birth name — Nimarata, which he misspelled as “Nimrada” — as a dog whistle, much like his exaggerated enunciation of former President Barack Obama’s middle name, Hussein.

And he has grown more aggressive on the campaign trail.

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Wednesday night, he said of Haley, “I don’t know that she’s a Democrat, but she’s very close. She’s far too close for you.”

But his team is looking ahead to the South Carolina primary Feb. 24 as a “Waterloo” for his primary rivals, according to one Trump adviser, likening the state to the battlefield where Napoleon met his final defeat. Their aim is to humiliate her in her home state.

“South Carolina is where Nikki Haley’s dreams go to die,” another senior Trump adviser, Chris LaCivita, said.

Trump has been privately courting Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, hoping to win his endorsement before the primary. Trump allies who have relationships with Scott, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have been assisting the effort.

Republicans across the country, including senators who were previously skeptical of Trump, are assisting his strategy by consolidating their support, rushing to declare the race over, rolling out endorsements and demanding that his rivals quit to “unify” the party against President Joe Biden.

Their efforts are being aided by the conservative news media, which has turned against DeSantis after giving his candidacy favorable coverage early on.

The inevitability strategy also appears to be bearing fruit within the business community.

On Wednesday morning, one of Wall Street’s most powerful CEOs, Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase — who as recently as November urged donors to “help Nikki Haley” — praised aspects of Trump’s record and scolded Democrats for vilifying the former president’s Make America Great Again movement.

Haley finished third in Monday’s Iowa caucuses but is facing what polls suggest is more favorable terrain in New Hampshire, where unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in the primary and where her allies argue even a close second could provide a rationale to stay in the race. Even there, however, she needs a large turnout of unaffiliated voters to overcome Trump’s overwhelming backing from Republicans.

Haley is trying to portray Trump and Biden as two of the same: disliked elderly politicians who are exacerbating chaos. It’s a message tailored for independent voters tired of Trump.