There was a time when I would have been an enthusiastic supporter of Haley's presidential ambitions. As South Carolina Governor, she was a solid leader, a woman of color who had impeccable conservative credentials. When Donald Trump ran for President in 2016, she was a critic. Time reports:
“Every time someone criticizes him, he goes and makes a political attack back,” Haley said in 2015. “That’s not who we are as Republicans. That’s not what we do.”She also slammed his plan to build a border wall and his other positions on immigration. “Republicans need to remember that the fabric of America came from these legal immigrants,” Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, said. “If you want to talk about tackling illegal immigration, then let’s talk about it, but we don’t need to attack so many millions of people who came here. . . and did it the right way, like my parents."
In her 2016 State of the Union response, Haley did not mention Trump by name but said, “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices.”Ahead of her state’s primary, she was even more direct, saying that Trump represented “everything a governor doesn’t want in a President.” She said she would not back the controversial business tycoon and ultimately endorsed Florida Senator Marco Rubio. When he dropped out, she supported Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
But then when Trump was elected President, Haley took a job in the Trump administration as UN Ambassador. During her tenure, Haley kept a low profile and even took public positions that differed from Trump's. This included Haley's attacking Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election (which Trump had refused to acknowledge had happened and her strong support for NATO).
As she prepared to resign from the Trump administration in 2018, Haley appeared to be on the verge of departing with her reputation and integrity intact, a rarity among Trump administration officials. But then Haley wrote a book that flushed her integrity and independence down the toilet. The book:
Haley lavished the President with praise, explaining his strategy in complimenting Russian President Vladimir Putin as a maneuver intended to keep communication open. Talking to NBC during her book tour, she spoke positively about Trump: “In every instance I dealt with him, he was truthful, he listened and he was great to work with,” she said.
Which is the experience of no one who has ever worked with Trump.
Then came January 6th. Haley blamed Trump for the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol and suggested it was time the Republicans moved on from him:
“I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated,” Haley told Politico the week after the attack. “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… I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture. … I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” 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.”
But sensing the political winds had not yet shifted away from Trump, she in October 2021 was back to supporting him again.
“He has the ability to get strong people elected, and he has the ability to move the ball, and I hope that he continues to do that,” Haley told the Wall Street Journal. “We need him in the Republican Party. I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”
That same year, Haley claimed that she would "never run against my President (Trump), he was a great President."
Then came the November 2022 mid-terms. In a year that should have been a landslide for the GOP, the "strong people" Trump recruited lost general elections in state after state. Meanwhile, the Republicans who distanced themselves from Trump prevailed. Those dismal election results caused Haley to shift her position about Trump once again leading to her announcement this week that she would run against the ex-President.
Haley worked in the Trump administration. She saw Trump's incompetence, his dishonesty, how Trump and his family used the Presidency to line their own pockets (for example, see how Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner pocketed money from Saudi Arabia). As a woman of color, there is no doubt Haley saw Trump's racism and misogyny. As President, and in his response to losing an election, Trump proved beyond doubt that he had no respect for American democracy or the Constitution. In her role as Ambassador to the UN, Haley was a first-hand witness to Trump's cozing up to brutal dictators and Trump's attacks on democratically-elected leaders who were allied with the United States.
None of that apparently mattered to Haley. Apparently the only thing that matters to Haley is that Trump proved himself in 2022 to be a LOSER. I should note that many of us knew that Trump has always been a loser and his 2016 win was simply a fluke that has never been replicated in subsequent elections.
Haley's political career post-2016 has been about guessing which way the crowd is heading and then trying to get in front of it. In doing so, she has proven herself to be someone without character and integrity. We certainly don't need someone like her in the White House.
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