When Nikki Haley stepped down as US ambassador to the United Nations in late 2018, wrote The New York Times in an editorial that “they are the rarest of all Trump appointees,” “one who can leave the administration while retaining her dignity.”
That was, indeed, a rarity at a time when then-President Donald Trump was burning up ministers and advisers like loose sheriffs. It says a lot about the caution – critics say hypocrisy – of the former governor of South Carolina, who announced on Tuesday that she wants to be the Republican presidential candidate in 2024. She always knew how to be silent or absent at just the right moment.
Haley, 54, is Trump’s first official competitor as a candidate for the Republican Party. She has walked a wonderful winding path around him in the past. In the 2016 primaries, she was outspoken against: “He’s not the president you want to see as governor.” Nevertheless, in 2017 she was nominated by Trump as a UN ambassador. There she made a good impression, that is, she was a typical Republican hawk, but she seemed thoughtful and sensible compared to more chaotic or outright radical populist collaborators like Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro or Stephen Miller. At the UN, she was a tireless defender of Israel’s interests. When the US under her leadership left the UN Human Rights Council in 2018, she gave the reason that the council was anti-Israel, “hypocritical and self-centered”.
Cultural issues
On cultural issues, Haley, the child of Indian migrants, seemed more progressive than the core Republican Party. She rejected a South Carolina bill that would require transgender people to go to the restroom of their “biological sex.” „I don’t think we need such a law here“, she said. When Trump wanted to introduce a travel ban for residents of certain Islamic countries, Haley was openly critical of it (although she stayed on when the measure took effect).
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In this way, Haley cultivated a moderate image without rejecting Trump’s radical conservative supporters. She did, however, after the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. The following day, she addressed the Republican Party: “History will judge harshly what Trump has done since the election.”
But a year later she was suddenly very determined when asked if she would challenge him in a Republican primary: no, if Trump ran, she wouldn’t, she said. Then she would support him.
New Generation
With Tuesday’s announcement, she can no longer ignore it: she will have to drop Trump to become president. “Time for a new generation of leaders in America,” said Haley in the video she launched on Twitter Tuesday morning – a shot at the old generation, that of her former boss.
In her video, she presses all the keys that a Republican candidate for 2024 has to play: God, country, closed borders, stop talking about racism, and the big enemies are China, Iran and the Democratic socialists. And she was not afraid of it bullies , she said. “I stand up to bullies.”
If she (also) means Donald Trump by that, he will soon have to bring a pair of shin guards to the Republican debates. “If you kick back, it hurts them more when you’re wearing heels,” Haley said.