Fresh off two primary victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, former President Donald Trump launched an all-out offensive against Nikki Haley last week as his only remaining rival for the 2024 Republican nomination vowed to stay in the race and as polls showed Trump was losing key support among Republicans.
In his Tuesday night victory speech to supporters in New Hampshire, Trump castigated Haley, threatening to block donations to her campaign, put her “under investigation,” and permanently bar GOP members who were believed to be jumping ship to support the former South Carolina governor.
Trump had great reason to be concerned about Haley as a substantial share of Iowa and New Hampshire voters indicated they did not plan to support Trump in the general election, including 43 percent of Haley’s supporters who said they would stick with President Joe Biden over Trump, according to Politico, which cited an NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll.
Trump also saw a significant shift in his support, suggesting that voters were not evaluating Trump based solely on his current campaign but on his previous term in the White House, making it challenging for him to reconnect with those he alienated during his tumultuous presidency.
Despite two early victories under his belt, Trump faced an uphill climb in the general election as he has lost a big share of his MAGA base nearly eight years after his landslide election victory in 2016, recent polls show.
The recent polling showed trouble on the horizon for Trump as Democrats were positioned to take advantage of Trump’s weakening stance with moderate and independent voters, especially as the Biden administration was seeking to drill down on key issues such as abortion, gender rights, climate change, gun violence and affordable health care.
Trump’s declining popularity with moderate and independent voters is likely to become more of a concern for Republicans the longer he remains the GOP front-runner, while the moment also presented a major opportunity for Haley to ingratiate herself with disaffected voters who still lean Republican, Politico noted.
A separate poll by The New York Times/Siena College found Biden received slightly 91 percent support from Democrats and independents, compared to the 86 percent that Trump got from Republicans and independents.
Is Nikki Haley Really a Threat to Donald Trump?
The incumbent’s popularity has also taken a significant hit in recent months, with some of Biden’s most staunch supporters in 2020 now exploring other options or contemplating not voting at all.
Political experts, including former Trump allies, also noted that Haley was eating into GOP donations that would otherwise be going to Trump if she was out of the picture.
“Oh, she’s hurting him,” said Anthony Scaramucci, who served 10 days as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017, during a Thursday interview with “CNN This Morning.”
“I mean, you have to look at the case that she’s making against him, and then you have to look at the exit polling on the voters that are saying they’re not going to cross over to Donald Trump,” Scaramucci said. “And so she is hurting him. He knows she’s hurting him.”
Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations during his administration, was exerting more pressure on Trump by remaining in the contest as the Republican field narrowed to just two candidates after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race following his collapse in the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses.
Away from Trump’s “temper tantrum,” Haley insisted the primary race was “far from over” as primaries had yet to be settled in dozens of other states, including a critical ballot in Haley’s home state of South Carolina on Feb. 24, which she previously set as a benchmark to determine whether she would continue or withdraw from the race.
“I want to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory tonight; he earned it, and I want to acknowledge that New Hampshire is first in the nation – it is not last in the nation,” ” she said.
Despite losing her second primary contest, Haley sounded pleased with where she finished and expressed confidence in her odds of beating Trump, saying the former president “should feel threatened.”
“We were very excited last night because we saw that we had gone up 25 points in a month. And we were thrilled,” Haley said, according to The Hill. “So we got out there, and we did our thing, and we said what we had to say. And then Donald Trump got out there and just threw a temper tantrum.”
“He pitched a fit, he was — he was insulting, he was doing what he does, but I know that’s what he does when he’s insecure,” she continued. “I know that’s what he does when he is threatened. And he should feel threatened, without a doubt.”
Haley also clapped back by questioning Trump’s age and his fitness for office following major mental errors by the former president on the campaign trail, including a recent rally in New Hampshire where Trump confused Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as he talked about U.S. Capitol security on the day of the 2021 attack by Trump’s most fanatic supporters.
“I’ve long called for mental competency tests for politics over the age of 75,” she said. “Trump claims he’d do better than me in one of those tests. If he thinks that, then he should have no problem standing on a debate stage with me.”
She added: “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate will win this election.”
Meanwhile, Trump pointed out that Haley finished in third place in Iowa behind DeSantis.
“Just a little note to Nikki, she is not going to win,” Trump told a crowd of supporters on Tuesday night. “But if she did, she would be under investigation … in 15 minutes.”
Trump attempted to cast doubt on his opponent by vaguely accusing Haley of unspecified misconduct, without citing any evidence, and he also made a series of social media posts that cast Haley as “DELUSIONAL.”
“I could tell you five reasons why already, not big reasons, little stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about, but she will be under investigation in minutes,” he said. “And so would Ron have been, but he decided to get out.”
Later in the speech, Trump called Haley an “imposter” who was still “hanging around” after losing the first two contests of the 2024 election cycle.
“We beat her so badly,” he told the cheering crowd.
“I can say to everybody ‘thank you for the victories, it’s wonderful’ or I can go up and say ‘who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and claimed a victory?’ She did very poorly actually.”
On his Truth Social platform, Trump also complained that Haley was breaking with Republican tradition by refusing to bow out and hand her donations over to him as the clear front-runner.
“When I ran for Office and won, I noticed that the losing Candidate’s ‘Donors’ would immediately come to me and want to ‘help out.’ This is standard in Politics, but no longer with me,” Trump wrote.
Haley responded to Trump in a post to the platform X, saying, “Well in that case … donate here. Let’s Go!”
She added a link to her campaign donations page.
Later, Trump followed up with another post that said, “We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!”
