Newsmax Continued To Be Largely Negative To Nikki Haley Until She Dropped Out

Posted on April 3, 2024

The pro-Trump Newsmax has long hated Nikki Haley for daring to run against its idol. It did publish the occasional article that covered her mostly uncritically, but much of its coverage was very anti-Haley. Closer to the norm (and the narrative) was a Feb. 2 column by Patrick Dorinson complaining that Haley said mean things about Donald Trump and, thus, ruined her political career:

Nikki Haley in her speech [after the New Hampshire primary] was tougher on Donald Trump than she had ever been.

She didn’t pull any punches and she let it be known that she was in it to win it however remote that possibility is.

If you don’t believe me, just watch the beginning of Trump’s speech that night as he laid into her with a special dose of venom.

Gone was the magnanimity that he employed on the night of his Iowa victory.

My guess is she knew she would get that reaction the minute she finished her speech.

[…]

There will be no next time in 2028 no matter what the geniuses on TV and in newspaper columns tell her.

This is it. And she knows it.

So, she did the only thing she could do.

Like Cortes she took the big gamble.

She burned the ships that could carry her back to the safe harbor of a future in the Republican Party.

They are smoldering wrecks on the beaches of New Hampshire.

And unlike Cortes she will not be triumphant and have her name etched into history.

She will be but a footnote.

The negative coverage continued through February. For example:

Trump adviser Dick Morris made his own anti-Haley contribution in a March 2 TV appearance:

Some might have viewed the 2024 Republican presidential primary as a contested one, but presidential campaign adviser Dick Morris took a bow on Newsmax for having declared it over before it began — as the results have proven.

“I don’t want to dislocate my shoulder patting myself on the back; but in my original book that I wrote, ‘The Return,’ I predict that Trump will win, that he’ll get the nomination, and that he might even get the nomination unanimously by acclamation,” Morris told “Saturday Report.”

“And that’s becoming increasingly likely, given the results shaping up in Super Tuesday.”

Everyone could see the Trump victory coming swiftly, except Haley, of course, Morris lamented to host Rita Cosby.

“I think afterwards it’s sayonora,” Morris said. “I think she goes away; she fades; and she occupies this space in history a little bit like Liz Cheney, you know — talking a lot, but no political power.

“I think that Trump is going to wipe Haley out in these primaries — state after state after state. And I don’t think she can recover from that.”

Writer Eric Mack didn’t disclose that Morris is advising Trump.

That was followed by another anti-Haley shot by Trump supporter Richard Grenell, who declared that Haley’s “political career is over” because she argued that his legal issues should be dealt with before the November election. It did, however, also publish an article a couple days before Super Tuesday noting that Haley “expressed uncertainty about whether former President Donald Trump would adhere to the Constitution if reelected in 2024.”

After Super Tuesday’s primaries, the headline on a March 5 article by Michael Katz declared, “March Madness: Trump Swamps Haley on Super Tuesday.” It did publish another article seemingly lamenting that “Nikki Haley prevented a clean sweep of Super Tuesday by Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump with a win in Vermont.”

When Haley did finally drop out after Super Tuesday, Newsmax took a couple more shots at her:

After an article noting that “a Biden campaign official invited her supporters to join the Democrat incumbent’s reelection bid,” a surprisingly non-negative March 6 article by Eric Mack reported on Haley dropping out of the race.