Since accepting Trump’s offer to become the American ambassador to the United Nations, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley has walked a fine tightrope within the GOP.
As is clear in a recent Politico profile about her, this balancing act saw her support the former president publicly while apparently bringing frank criticisms of his actions to him in private. As she had formed a friendship with Trump that persisted after leaving his administration in 2018 — making her one of the few to do so and remain on good terms with him — she appeared to be someone he would actually listen to.
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However, a key takeaway from that profile is that she is now unwilling to keep up that act anymore as her own political aspirations lie ahead of her.
Over the course of completing his profile on Haley, Politico writer Tim Alberta spoke to almost 70 friends, former colleagues, donors, and other associates of hers.
And as he discovered, the consensus from those interactions suggests that Haley will likely seek a presidential run in 2024.
However, what was less clear was which Nikki Haley would be trying to secure the public’s vote.
As Alberta put it, “Will it be the Haley who has proven so adaptive and so canny that she might accommodate herself to the dark realities of a Trump-dominated party? Will it be the Haley who is combative and confrontational and had a history of giving no quarter to xenophobes? Or will it be the Haley who refuses to choose between these characters, believing she can be everything to everyone?”
One of the matters that brings this question to the forefront and exemplifies the balancing act I mentioned earlier was Haley’s defense of Trump following the 2020 Presdential Election.
As she told Alberta, she characterized his repeated and unfounded claims that he lost due to widespread voter fraud as lies that bad actors surrounding the former president fed to him rather than something he dreamed up.
In her words, “That would be like you saying that grass is blue and you genuinely believing it. Is it irresponsible that you’re colorblind and you truly believe that?”
But while she asserted that Trump’s claims were the result of those around him not telling him the truth, she also admitted that she avoided doing so when she had the opportunity without explaining why.
After the Capitol Riots, however, it appeared that she had enough of defending Trump and told members of the Republican National Convention “His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history” at a winter meeting.
Her condemnation of Trump continued as she spoke to Alberta, as she said, “We need to acknowledge he let us down. He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Nonetheless, this apparently didn’t stop her from criticizing House Democrat efforts to impeach him since Newsweek reported her as saying, “They beat him up before he got into office. They are beating him up after he leaves office. I mean, at some point, I mean, give the man a break. I mean, move on.”
These statements were made just over three weeks before her profile came out.
That said, Haley also told Alberta that she hasn’t spoken to Trump since the Capitol riot occurred.
For her, the breaking point in her relationship with Trump occurred when he publicly turned on former vice president Mike Pence for not blocking Congress’ certification of the vote, an action he was not constitutionally empowered to do.
As Haley put it, “When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement. Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He’s been nothing but a good friend of that man. […] I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”
But again, Haley maintained her belief that impeaching Trump is a “waste of time.”
And as for how she should expect Trump to be held accountable in the absence of impeachment, she said, “I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated. I think his business is suffering at this point.
“I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving.”
And when it comes to the impeachment goal of ensuring Trump can’t run for federal office again, Haley appeared confident that he’s already not likely to do that.
In her words, “I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture. I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”
It’s worth noting that Haley also predicted that Trump would go quietly after the Texas attorney general’s lawsuit that sought to discount millions of votes in battleground states was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.
You may recall that this happened about three-and-a-half weeks before his speech insisting that his supporters “wouldn’t have a country anymore” if they didn’t “stop the steal” shortly before the Capitol riot broke out.
h/t: Politico
