Donald Trump’s recent behavior toward Nikki Haley does not suggest he’s laying the groundwork to pick her as his running mate. While he was gracious toward all of his Republican rivals after he won the Iowa caucus on Monday night, less than 24 hours later he went back to attacking his closest New Hampshire primary rival. During a Tuesday-night rally he called Haley a “disaster” who did a poor job as his United Nations ambassador. Meanwhile on Truth Social he revived his nickname for her, “Bird Brain,” and addressed her as “Nimrada,” a misspelling of her first name, as a racist dog whistle (he’s also floated birther claims against her). At another New Hampshire rally on Wednesday night, Trump baselessly accused Haley of trying to rig the primary and said she’s nearly a Democrat, per the Washington Post:
Still, Trump argued during his rally here that Haley is “counting on Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican primary.”
“A vote for Nikki Haley this Tuesday is a vote for Joe Biden and a Democratic Congress this November,” Trump said. (He went so far as to suggest that Haley would abandon her party, stating at one point: “I actually think she might go to the Democrat Party.”)
Obviously, plenty of presidential nominees have trashed their rivals during a primary only to invite them to join their ticket. So Trump’s nasty remarks about Haley don’t mean he’s definitely ruled her out as his 2024 VP pick. And Haley foes in Trump’s orbit are so worried about the possibility that they’re sounding alarms about how she might undermine his second term.
Some of these scenarios are pretty outlandish. Politico’s Jonathan Martin reported on Thursday that Haley foes are warning Trump that making her his VP could lead to a coup attempt by Establishment Republicans:
Haley’s critics have even privately warned Trump that, were he to make Haley first in line to the presidency, he’d effectively be setting himself up for an intra-party coup, as GOP senators would use any legal or political pretext to remove him from office and elevate the more old guard-aligned Haley.
And Representative Matt Gaetz shared this vivid image of Haley plotting the MAGA movement’s downfall from the vice-president’s residence:
“Nikki Haley as VP would be an establishment neocon fantasy and a MAGA nightmare,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told me. “On Day One she would convert the Naval Observatory into an anti-Trump, resistance headquarters, undermining him at every step.”
It is hard to imagine a significant number of GOP senators successfully scheming to oust Trump in favor of Vice-President Haley. They had a pretty good “pretext” for barring Trump from office when he was impeached for “incitement of insurrection” in 2021, yet only seven Republican senators voted to convict in his second impeachment trial.
But it is true that having Haley waiting in the wings would empower Trump’s GOP foes. As Martin notes, the “uproar” in MAGA World over the possibility of Haley as VP is really about “whether Trump should cede” any power “by offering concessions to the GOP traditionalists he’s poised to vanquish yet again.”
Trump has suggested that after being betrayed (in his view) by former Vice-President Mike Pence, he values loyalty in a VP more than ever. And while Trump picked Pence to appease more traditional Republicans, that’s much less of a concern these days; a recent ABC News/Ipsos poll shows three out of four Republican-leaning adults would be satisfied with Trump as their nominee. Plus, he has plenty of other VP options who aren’t working to block his third straight GOP presidential nomination, such as Elise Stefanik and Kristi Noem.
So why are Haley haters even worrying about her as a potential running mate? Well, according to Martin, Trump keeps bringing her up:
Trump has been told, by his son Don and others, that picking Haley would ensure a significant backlash from his populist base. Yet that hasn’t stopped the former president, as he is wont to do, from quizzing people about her to test their reactions.
And some in Trump’s organization believe, like [Senator Lindsey] Graham, that if Trump was convinced Haley could ensure victory he’d put aside his reservations and ignore the pleas against her.
So maybe Haley is still in the veepstakes despite the many signs to the contrary. Or maybe Trump wants to keep even his closest allies guessing about his VP pick, though he recently teased, “I know who it’s going to be.”
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