Nikki Haley made it clear in a Sunday morning interview that if she loses, she will take Trump and the RNC with her.
Meet The Press’s Kristen Welker asked Haley if she thought that the RNC has been an honest broker in the Republican primary.
Haley answered:
I mean, clearly not. If you’re going to go and basically tell the American people that you’re going to go and decide who the nominee is after only two states have voted? 48 states are still out there. This is a democracy. The American people want to have their say in who is going to be their nominee. We need to give them that. You can’t do that based on just two states and not only that, it’s 1215 delegates to reach the nomination. Donald Trump has 32, I have 17. So let’s let this play out and let’s do what we need to. We saw South Carolinians and we had 1500 people in Greenville county and Americans want to be able to make this decision themselves. I don’t think this is the place of the RNC to do it, and Trump overstepped when he pushed them on do it and I think that’s why he’s had to back down and that was the right thing to do to back down.”
Welker asked, “Do you have actual knowledge and awareness that he pushed the RNC to do that and then pulled back?”
Haley said, “We know exactly the people that pushed it are his people, and I know that during the debates, he was pushing Ronna McDaniel to stop the debates. He was calling her every other day and he’s been pushing them to pay for his lawsuits and all of these other things, but at the end of the day, this is not about the RNC and this is not about the American people and the political party deciding who they want to be the nominee.”
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Haley was right. The RNC is broke because they have been paying Trump’s legal bills, and Trump did try to get the RNC to pass a resolution declaring that he is the nominee. Given the composition of the Republican primary electorate, Trump, if he is alive, is going to be the Republican nominee.
Haley is making it clear that she is not going to get out of the race just because Trump says so, and that she is going to take her pound of flesh out of Trump and his corrupt operation.
Nikki Haley may lose, but she is the first Republican presidential candidate going one-on-one with Trump in eight years to call out some of what the rest of the country is seeing. Haley is no hero, but her outspokenness is another sign of the sizable discontent within the Republican Party over being stuck again with Trump and his cronies at the top of the ticket.
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Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
