Former President Donald Trump "whiffed" and made a tactical error that could cost him, a Democratic strategist noted on CNN on Friday night.
Chuck Rocha, founder of Nuestro PAC, told panelists on "NewsNight" that Trump rebuffed an opportunity to make amends with voters of former primary foe Nikki Haley, whom he defeated following a bitter rivalry.
Trump emphasized during a "Fox and Friends" interview that he soundly defeated the former South Carolina governor the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration. When asked whether he feels Haley can help him defeat Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump stressed he "beat Nikki [Haley] badly."
" Nikki Haley and I fought and I beat her by 50, 60, 90 points!" he boasted. "I beat her in her own state by numbers that nobody's ever been beaten by! I beat Nikki badly! I beat everyone else too badly! I mean, frankly, I set records, both in speed and in the magnitude of the win... I beat everybody by numbers that has never happened before and they keep talking about Nikki, Nikki."
Trump then emphasized, "Nikki is in, Nikki is helping us already."
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Rocha said Trump had a "great strategic opportunity" that "as a strategist, he really whiffed on."
"There's somebody watching Fox News and that's Nikki Haley voters," he said. "And they literally served him up a softball to say something nice about Nikki Haley and he could not help himself. And he went down the rabbit hole of how he whupped her in the primaries and she's no good."
Haley received 76,000 votes in Wisconsin, noted Rocha, and President Joe Biden only won the state by fewer than 20,000.
"Every one of those votes are like gold," he said. "As a strategist, they vote like it's their job. If they vote in the primary, I promise you they're coming back to vote in the general."
Watch the clip below or at this link.