As one would expect from such an aggressively pro-Trump “news” outlet, WorldNetDaily has taken plenty of shots at Nikki Haley, though she did get some favorable coverage. For example, a Jan. 4 column by Andrew Napolitano tried to defend Haley after she omitted slavery as a cause of the Civil War: “The initial verbal and military salvos in the war were over whether the states – covetous of tariff revenues seized by the feds – could voluntarily leave the union and resume collecting tariffs; hardly a novel concept at the time, but in a government school, you probably never heard this.” (In fact, several Confederate states specifically cited slavery as a reason for leaving the Union in their secession statements.)
But as Haley stayed in the race after the Iowa caucuses and refused to immediately capitulate to Trump, WND ramped up its attacks on her, joining with its columnist Wayne Allyn Root. Mike Pottage attacked her in a Jan. 17 column:
The only way to assure your political party does not lose a presidential election is to secure an acceptable candidate nomination from both parties. Nikki Haley is the Republican mirror image of Joe Biden.
Tucker Carlson’s day-after election analysis focused on the presidency but did not explore what a Nikki Haley presidency would do to Congress. That is worth considering. In a word, she would castrate it. Congress would function as if three political parties won seats. There would be the Democratic Party, the Conservative Republican Party and the GOP “me too crowd” as the swing vote. In other words, Nikki holding forth at the White House will perpetuate Democratic control. We could expect her first Supreme Court nomination to be the grandson of Earl Warren.
Even if Democrats failed to regain control of Congress in 2024, they would command and control the hearings and headlines. The Nikki Haley “me too crowd” would surrender the vote to Democrats on important issues such as immigration and foreign affairs and the economy.
[…]It is a time for choosing. A Nikki Haley presidency will decide nothing. Her instincts will allow her to be controlled by the bureaucracy for the benefit of the bureaucracy. A Biden victory will perpetuate the chaos.
An anonymously written Jan. 22 article suddenly found a non-right-wing publication credible:
The list of Republican presidential candidates is being pared as the New Hampshire vote approaches Tuesday.
And social media is skewering one, Nikki Haley, as a flip-flopper.
A new video has her, in her own words, reversing positions on gender ideology, gas taxes, social media, China, the United Nations and more.
Only last year Time published a criticism of her, over her changes.
No mention, of course, of the numerous flip-flops Trump has performed over the years.
Three hours later, another anonymously written article complained that Haley violated a right-wing narrative by admitting that racism exists, accusing her of “playing [the] race card”:
Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador running behind President Donald Trump by many points in the race for this year’s Republican nomination for president, has appeared on video explaining what it was like to grow up a “brown girl.”
Her family has a heritage that comes through India.
In a video posted at the Liberty Daily, she explains, “I was teased every day for being brown.”
She suggested that anyone who wants to question her, can go back and “look at what I’ve said, on how hard it was to grow up in the Deep South as a brown girl.”
The same day, Rachel Alexander spent a column grousing that Haley was doing the common political thing of criticizing her opponent:
It’s been rather depressing watching the downward spiral of Nikki Haley as she washes out challenging Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. She started her political career with such promise, as an American of Indian immigrant parents who worked her way up from state legislator to governor of South Carolina and then U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Now, although conservatives need to rally behind Trump as he is targeted by the left through fascist political prosecutions, she is doing the opposite and attacking him.
Obviously, Haley believes if she gets her name recognition up, she’ll be in a better position to run for president in 2028 or later, and if she performs well in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, it will give her leverage to demand to be Trump’s vice-presidential running mate. But despite the fact the establishment has kept that state’s primary mostly open, allowing independents to skew the results towards moderates, Trump appears poised to take over 50% of the vote as he did in Iowa.
Alexander was further angered that Haley told the truth about the Capitol riot and purported election fraud in 2020:
A few days after the Jan. 6, 2021 protest at the U.S. Capitol, Haley faulted Trump for the clash. “We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she said during an interview. “I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. … He’s fallen so far.” She continued, “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. … When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement.”
Trump said on J6 speaking to a crowd near the U.S. Capitol, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”
Haley believes Biden was legitimately elected president, and said Trump’s efforts to overturn the results would “be judged harshly by history.” She praised Pence for accepting the electoral slates for Biden from states suspected of election fraud: “I do think that Vice President Pence did the right thing, and I do think that we need to give him credit for that.”
Alexander concluded by huffing:
The truth is Haley appears to be garnering significant interest because the fake news MSM covers her campaign relentlessly, in an effort to make Trump look less popular and pretend Republicans are becoming more moderate. She’s been able to soar ahead of Ron DeSantis because he’s too similar to Trump, and she has the woman and Indian factor.
Much of Haley’s transformation into a moderate Republican is likely typical of why RINOs become RINOS; a combination of follow the money and knowing too many establishment players she considers “friends.” The Republican Party needs to stay far away from what would clearly be another Bush type of leader.
On Jan. 23, WND posted a video in which Tucker Carlson and Rand Paul allegedly “scorch Nikki Haley.” An anonymously written Jan. 25 article touted attacks on Haley from her home state. Then, Bob Unruh spent a Jan. 29 article bashing the constitutional right to trial by jury because Haley endorsed it:
It’s not unusual for a political candidate, in this case Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, to take subtle jabs when an opponent, like President Trump, takes a hit in a legal fight.
But Haley is raising eyebrows by her citations of whom she “trusts” in a recent court decision that Trump is expected to appeal.
The jurors in the East Coast establishment.
These jurors are from the same elite social and economic class that a survey earlier showed were willing to see Jan. 6 protesters executed.
She said, during an interview, “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.”
That decision from the New Yorkers was that Trump must pay, pending affirmation on appeal, $83.3 million to E. Jean Carroll for calling her a liar when she accused him of rape, a charge another jury rejected.
That first jury awarded Carroll $5 million, accusing Trump of belittling her when she accused him of rape. She sued again after he continued to deny her claims after the first verdict. He says both decisions will be appealed.
The New York jury’s decision wasn’t a surprise, as the judge already had claimed that Trump defamed Carroll by denying her claims.
Funny how Unruh thinks juries are wrong because they rule against Trump; he offered no evidence to prove the jury was wrong in any way. And in framing juries as part of “the East Coast establishment” and, thus, somehow biased against right-wingers like Trump, Unruh — like former WND colleague Peter LaBarbera — shows he doesn’t understand how juries work, since both prosecutors and defense lawyers as well as the judge will screen jurors and try to eliminate those who they believe cannot be impartial.