When Nikki Haley chose to stay in the Republican primary race after votes in Iowa and New Hampshire, WorldNetDaily — the pro-Trump outlet that had already been attacking her for running in the first place — ramped up those attacks. Editor Joseph Farah raged in a Jan. 30 column that Haley agreed with the $83 million ruling against Trump in the lawsuit E. Jean Carroll filed against him for sexually assaulting her:
Have you noticed the way Nikki Haley says anything she thinks is appropriate in the moment – then denies it later, despite the existence of a transcript and a recording?
As an example, here’s what the presidential candidate told NBC News on Jan. 28 in talking about the E. Jean Carroll “rape” case in New York against President Donald Trump:
“I absolutely trust the jury, and I think that they made their decision based on the evidence. I just don’t think that should take [Trump] off the ballot. I think the American people will take him off the ballot.”
Let me tell you about the destructive pathology of Nikki Haley.
She often says contradictory things like the above, making statements and then denying them 15 minutes later. I hope she familiarizes herself with the transcript and recording this time. I think that soundbite will end her political career – at least in 2024.
Farah then went full Heathering on Haley, insisting she’s “not a part of the MAGA Nation” because she thinks he should face consequences for his behavior:
Nikki Haley is a politician – a grasping, say-anything-about-her-opponent, entitled candidate, and not a part of the MAGA Nation.
Say what you will about Donald J. Trump. He’s a very gracious man. Obviously, he’s competitive. And he loves his country.
Where were all the enemies of Trump when he was just an great businessman? He was the toast of the town in New York! Everybody loved the guy – even Hillary Clinton.
Nikki, do you really believe that cock-and-bull story that Trump raped a woman in the ’90s and she just decided to punish him now?
You just disqualified yourself – and not just from the presidential race.
Michael Master spent his Jan. 31 column complaining about the existence of non-MAGA people who support Haley instead of Trump:
We are watching a bullfight – and Donald Trump is the bull. Nikki Haley is just a weapon in the fight, an expendable one.
GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is the next Liz Cheney. Her political career as a Republican is done if she does not concede to the will of Republican voters. Instead, she is doing the bidding of oligarchs like Charles Koch to weaken Trump for the general election and distract Americans from Biden/Democrat failures in hopes that her alliance with rich elites will catapult her failing political career.
Many billionaire donors have made their donations to Haley through Americans for Prosperity, which is a PAC that is a front for Koch, an anti-Trump Republican. The PAC’s only objective is to stop Trump. Haley is just a tool, a weapon, to use against Trump, who is the bull in the fight.
[…]Picture the reactions of these rich oligarchs when Trump restricted their use of tax deductions like SALT (State and Local Taxes), business losses and interest payments (like interest payments to family members); when Trump reduced their cheap labor entering the U.S. from Mexico; when Trump put tariffs on products from their companies in China; when Trump put energy policies in place that reduced oil prices and the values of the billionaires’ oil investments; and when Trump exposed the control they weild of Democrat and Republican establishment politicians.
Trump scares them. “America First” scares them. MAGA scares them. Power to average American workers scares them. This bull in the fight scares them.
[…]Haley is like the picador in a bullfight. An antagonizer. The picador enters the ring long before the matador. He (she in this case) gets the bull to chase him around the ring to tire the bull. Then he eventually spears the bull in the top of its shoulders with short spears to hurt the animal before the matador enters the ring.
Oligarchs have Haley in the Republican ring to try to tire out and weaken Trump the bull, to wound him in preparation for a matador kill in the general election. The problem is that Trump the bull is about to gore her, “fatally,” just as he did to Cheney for her re-election primary loss – a 38-point loss – which will make Trump a stronger bull for November.
So why do people watch bullfights? Why are they watching this fight between Haley and Trump? Because sometimes the bull wins! And that is great entertainment … at Haley’s expense!
A Feb. 4 article by Joe Kovacs gushed that, after Haley made an appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” “Trump’s response came on Truth Social within the hour of the NBC broadcast, simply saying, ‘Tricky Nikki’ above the video of Haley’s astonishing flip-flops,” which he described in his headline as a “brilliant response.” The article was accompanied by a reader poll question asking, “Did Nikki Haley completely seal her defeat with this appearance on ‘Saturday Night Live’?”
An anonymously written Feb. 13 article groused that Haley pointed out how Trump is fully taking over the Republican National Committee by having his daughter-in-law installed as an official there. The anonymous writer didn’t dispute the accuracy of anything Haley — he or she just quoted an attack on her by a “Trump team member” — though it was admitted that Lara Trump “doesn’t have that level of political experience.”
Freelance writer Elizabeth Stauffer sounded like a Trump team member in a Feb. 24 article effectively demanding that Haley quit the race:
Last week, the New Yorker’s Antonia Hitchens made the case that Haley “lost the South Carolina primary back when she was still governor.” She wrote: “In her home state, Haley came to power as an outsider and never won over the good ol’ boys of the local Republican establishment. Now they’re supporting Trump.”
Hitchens turned out to be right: Except for Rep. Ralph Norman, R.-S.C., who endorsed Haley shortly after she announced her candidacy in February 2023, Republican leaders in the state back Trump. Supporters include the state’s governor, both senators and most congressmen.
Considering that Haley is trailing Trump nationally by an average of 58 points, her odds of capturing the GOP presidential nomination are almost nil. And by remaining on the campaign trail, she is widely seen as hurting both Trump and the Republicans’ chances of taking back the White House.
Haley’s relentless attacks on Trump’s age and the chaos that follows him are merely handing fodder to the Democrats, who will use it to boost Biden – or whoever they might pick to replace him. She also appears oblivious to the fact that most of the chaos surrounding Trump has been created by the Democrats’ efforts to bury him.
Haley’s campaign is being kept afloat in part by donations from anti-Trumpers inside the GOP as well as by Democrats. Last week, Politico reported that “[m]ore than 5,200 donors to Biden’s 2020 campaign have backed Haley financially, including roughly 1,600 who gave more than $500,000 in January alone.”
At a recent rally, Haley even encouraged Democrats who did not vote in the party’s Feb. 3 primary to cast a ballot for her on Saturday.
Stauffer went on to play down Trump’s nasty smear against Haley’s husband, basically arguing it was not a problem because the voters still love him:
As the South Carolina primary results attest, Trump seems to have overcome the one misstep he made with Haley when, speaking to supporters at a Conway, South Carolina, rally earlier this month, he said: “Then she comes over to see me at Mar-a-Lago. ‘Sir, I will never run against you.’ She brought her husband. Where’s your husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone! He knew. He knew.”
Haley’s husband, Michael, a major in the South Carolina National Guard, is currently serving a yearlong deployment in Djibouti. Haley responded to Trump’s remarks at a rally of her own: “I am proud of Michael’s service. Every military spouse knows it’s a family sacrifice. … 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,” Haley said. According to the Wall Street Journal, in the 48 hours after this exchange, the Haley campaign received $1 million from donors.
Although Haley prevailed in that particular skirmish, it was a minor victory at best. Haley stays in the race because she can, and despite her dismal performance in the primaries to date, donations have continued to pour in. Time will tell what her donors will do after this latest devastating defeat.
An anonymously written Feb. 28 article took more shots at Haley:
Former U.S. United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, now a Republican candidate contending for the party’s nomination for president this year, got 294,000 votes in the Michigan primary this week.
But President Donald Trump got more than 750,000 and that has prompted Haley to concede that it is “very possible” that her party has, in fact, moved toward Trump.
A report in Axios explained her comments came as Trump’s momentum toward the nomination appears to be surging.
When Haley did eventually drop out, WND left it to a March 6 outside article under a headline claiming that it came after “crushing Super Tuesday losses.”