Haley on Trump: Then and Now

Haley Shivs the ‘Haley Republicans’

The avatar of Trump’s 2024 GOP holdouts bends the knee.

From The Bulwark, by Andrew Egger:

Of course it doesn’t exactly come as a surprise. Nikki Haley’s flip-flops on Trump over the years have been legendary. “When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” the Trump-critic-turned-cabinet-member told Politico after January 6th. “I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. . . . He’s not going to run for federal office again. . . . 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.”

Then, just three months later, she said she’d support him if he did run: “I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it.” And a few months after that: “We need him in the Republican party. I don’t want to go back to the days before Trump.”

Even when she reversed herself on that pledge and ran anyway, Haley still didn’t start taking swings at Trump for nearly a year, instead focusing her fire on those closer to her in the polls: Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis.

But then, after Iowa, the rest of the field finally dropped out. It was Haley and Trump, mano a mano. And at long last, she set about making the case: This man is simply unfit to be president again.

A reminder: This was just a few months ago! You might have butter in your fridge you bought when Haley was talking like this:

• “He’s totally unhinged.”
• “If you are going to hit our military, you are not qualified to be president, period.”
• “If you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being president of the United States.”
• “Anybody that can’t call out a dictator, that’s a problem. . . . [Putin’s] emboldened by Trump because Trump is not willing to stand up for our allies.”
• “Trump just sided with a thug who kills his political opponents. He just sided with a man who goes and arrests American journalists and holds them hostage. He sided with him over the allies who stood with us at 9/11.”
• “He said that he would stand with Putin and encourage him to invade our allies. . . . Trump would side with a dictator who kills his political opponents. . . . Trump is going to side with a madman who’s made no bones about the fact he wants to destroy America.”
• “This is a man that put us $8 trillion in debt. . . . This is a man who praised China’s President Xi a dozen times after China gave us COVID. This is a man who now wants to go and put 10 percent tariffs across the board, raising taxes on every single American.”
• “He’s just trying to control as much as he can control, but we don’t want a king in America.”
• “Every bit of it is disgusting. To sit there and mock my husband for not being with me on the campaign trail because he is deployed and serving our country. . . . The reality is, the closest [Trump] has come to harm’s way is a golf ball hitting him on a golf cart.”
• “Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We cannot win a general election that way.”
• “Every single thing that Donald Trump has said or put on TV has been a lie.”

On the campaign trail, it seemed as though these attacks intensified as it was becoming clear she has absolutely no path to victory in the primary. She stuck it out all the way through Super Tuesday, plainly relishing the opportunity to hold nothing back. Even when she finally dropped out, she pointedly refused to endorse Trump: “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party who did not support him, and I hope he does,” she said in her concession speech. “This is now his time for choosing.”

Well. Now comes Haley to the stage at the Hudson Institute yesterday: “I will be voting for Trump. Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech: Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me. And not assume that they’re just gonna be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that.”

It’s amusing to imagine what action Trump took in the intervening months that Haley tells herself was enough to win her over. Repeatedly violating his gag order in his New York trial, perhaps? Accusing Joe Biden of trying to have him assassinated? Insisting additional aid to Ukraine be structured in the form of a loan?

For his part, Trump so far hasn’t even acknowledged Haley’s prostration—busy as he’s been barking about Jack Smith and his “Team of Political Hacks and Thugs.” I assume he’ll get around to the obligatory head pat sometime today. That is, if he doesn’t decide to give her the Bill Barr treatment.

One other thing bears saying. Haley likes to talk about her people—“the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me.”

Obviously we’ve all been doing this for months: considering the electoral ramifications of the “Haley Republicans.”

But of course this term was in some ways a misnomer. Many “Haley Republicans” weren’t really Haley Republicans in the ordinary sense, in that they didn’t necessarily fully share her view of the world or her politics.

Many “Haley Republicans” spent last year rolling their eyes at the cynical game she was playing, going after DeSantis hammer and tongs while ignoring Trump altogether for months. Many of them had no trouble remembering her hilariously checkered history on the Trump question.

But you know what? For a minute this year, she won those people over anyway. Because for a minute, when she got into that one-on-one with Trump, she actually seemed to be saying: Forget the consequences, I’m going to tell you how I really feel about the guy.

That’s what those people—that quarter or so of the party—were pulling the lever for. That’s what they kept pulling the lever for, in state after state, even after it was obvious it was a hopeless endeavor. Even after she dropped out! The “Haley Republicans” coalition wasn’t forged by stupid canned lines about how kicks hurt worse when you’re wearing heels. It wasn’t even forged by appreciation for Haley’s serious foreign policy views. “Haley Republicans” became a thing because, for a few months this year, Haley, uniquely among the top brass of the Republican party, was willing to step forward and tell the truth about Donald Trump.

That energy is still there—those voters are still there—but the coalition is gone now. “Haley Republicans” as a bloc ceased to exist when Nikki Haley took to the Hudson Institute stage to bend the knee.