Dumps Trump: Nikki Haley launches her 2024 campaign

FPI / February 14, 2021

In what declared her ambitions to be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley in a really long and equivocating Friday interview with Politico not only broke with former President Donald Trump, but threw him under the bus.

The magazine profile, which took a long time to come to the point, was music to the ears of the Washington ruling class and the Politico scribe they subsidize.

"We need to acknowledge he let us down," Haley said. "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."

The nuanced profile cast Haley as loyal-to-a-fault to her boss in public while privately despising him. And the article went to great, great lengths to spell out the new reality about to be rushed into print in textbooks across the land about the man who provided her much-needed foreign policy experience for her resume.

The president, wrote the scribe, refused "to concede defeat in an election he clearly lost, opting instead to delegitimize the institutions of government that upheld the result, indulge in outlandish conspiracy theories and generally subvert the country’s 244-year-old democratic norms."

Haley announced a new political action committee last month named after her Stand for America advocacy group. Her spokeswoman Chaney Denton said at the time that the PAC would be focused on helping get conservatives back in control in the House and Senate in 2022.

The former South Carolina governor told Politico that she has not spoken with Trump since the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Haley voiced her displeasure with Trump's Jan. 6 speech at a massive rally in D.C. and also remarks Trump made concerning Mike Pence.

"When I tell you I'm angry, it's an understatement," Haley said. "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."

This for a man who in the space of a week went from being highly regarded by Trump supporters as staunchly loyal to not only a sellout but arguably a traitor.

Haley said that the president "believes he is following" his oath of office by challenging the election results, adding, "There's nothing that you're ever going to do that's going to make him feel like he legitimately lost the election."

"He's got a big bully pulpit. He should be responsible with it," she said.

If he decides to run again in 2024, Trump would far and away be the favorite among Republican voters. With that in mind, in the days immediately following the Jan. 6 incident, Haley began to separate herself from Trump, saying in a speech to Republican National Committee (RNC) members that Trump was "badly wrong with his words" at his Jan. 6 rally.

"And it wasn't just his words," she added at the time. "His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history."

Haley told Politico that when she gave the RNC address she "was not expecting a whole bunch of love."

"I know how much people love Donald Trump. I know it. I feel it," Haley said. "Whether it's an RNC room or social media or talking to donors, I can tell you that the love they have for him is still very strong. That's not going to just fall to the wayside."

Haley added: "Nor do I think the Republican Party is going to go back to the way it was before Donald Trump. I don't think it should. What we need to do is take the good that he built, leave the bad that he did, and get back to a place where we can be a good, valuable, effective party. But at the same time, it's bigger than the party."

"I hope our country can come together and figure out how we pull this back," she added.

Free Press International