Former President Donald Trump definitively ruled out Nikki Haley as a possible running mate as he ramped up attacks against the former South Carolina Governor before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
“She is not presidential timber,” Trump said about Haley during a Friday campaign event in Concord, New Hampshire. “Now, when I say that, that probably means that she’s not going to be chosen as the vice president.”
“I know her very well. She’s not tough enough. She’s not smart enough. And she wasn’t respected enough. She cannot do this job,” added Trump, who once called Haley a “fantastic person” and “very special” when she resigned from the UN ambassadorship in 2018, a position to which Trump had appointed her. “She’s not going to be able to deal with President Xi. She’s not going to be able to deal with Putin.”
Haley, who has long maintained that she’s not running for second place, told a New Hampshire voter Friday that the Vice Presidency was “off the table,” according to a recording of the exchange obtained by Politico. “I have always said that. That is a game they play that I’m not going to play,” she said. “I don’t want to be vice president.”
Trump’s comments come as Haley has risen in the polls over the past month, especially in the Granite State, which has a high share of independent-leaning voters. The latest Suffolk University/NBC10 Boston/Boston Globe poll released Saturday morning had Trump leading Haley by 17 points, with Haley garnering 36 percent of likely GOP primary voters.
As he hopes a big win on Tuesday will secure his hold on the nomination, Trump yet again unleashed a racist attack on Haley’s birth name on Friday, calling her “Nimbra” three times in a post on Truth Social. Haley was born Nimarata Nikki Randhawa, and has always gone by her middle name. Since the start of 2024, Trump has been promoting baseless birther conspiracies about Haley, alleging that she is ineligible to run for president because her parents were not yet US citizens when she was born and purposefully butchering her name. (Despite these attacks, Haley continues to claim that the United States has “never” been a racist country.)
Asked by reporters Friday about Trump spreading birtherism lies, Haley said she’d “let people decide what he means by his attacks,” adding, “What we know is, look, he’s clearly insecure if he goes and does these temper tantrums if he’s spending millions of dollars on TV. He’s insecure, he knows that something’s wrong.”
Trump trotted out another conspiracy in his Friday morning post, claiming that New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu, who has been campaigning for Haley, “should spend more time keeping Democrats from voting in the Republican Primary.” New Hampshire allows undeclared voters to vote in either primary, but registered Democratic voters are not allowed to vote in Monday’s GOP contest.
Haley responded to the claim in a post on X, formerly Twitter, saying the GOP frontrunner’s post was “another reason we need to move on from Trump: too many lies.” And, responding to Trump’s argument that she’s “weak on China, Russia, Borders, and Crime,” the former South Carolina governor bragged about being “tougher on China and Russia than Trump ever was “and passing “the toughest illegal immigration law in the country as governor.”
And when Trump isn’t attacking Haley, he’s apparently getting her confused with other politicians. In his Friday speech, Trump seemed to mix up Haley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, accusing Haley of being “in charge of security” at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The odd mixup was particularly ironic given Trump’s constant claims that President Joe Biden is suffering from age-induced mental infirmity. “[Biden] can’t put two sentences together,” Trump said Friday. “Can’t put two sentences together. He needs a teleprompter.”
Jack McCordick
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