Donald Trump’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, is straddling several lines in an attempt to distinguish herself from other Republican candidates for the GOP 2024 presidential nomination, by going after her former boss over the massive 49-page 37-criminal counts indictment the ex-president will face on Tuesday while not totally throwing him under the bus.
First, Haley, a former Republican governor, made certain to toe the GOP line across several issues, including by attacking the men and women at the U.S. Dept. of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation while praising Trump, who “never got an ounce of credit or a moment’s peace.”
She also falsely described “Russiagate” as “not a fact.”
And then moved further away from her ex-boss and a few of her peers.
“Two things can be true at the same time,” Haley told Fox News Monday afternoon. “One, the DOJ and FBI have lost all credibility with the American people. And getting rid of just senior management isn’t going to be enough to fix this,” she said, ignoring that the FBI’s “senior management” was installed by Trump. “This is going to take a complete overhaul and we have to do that, too.”
“The second thing can also be true,” Haley continued. “If this indictment is true, if what it says is actually the case, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security.”
“More than that,” she explained. “I’m a military spouse – my husband’s about to deploy this weekend. This puts all of our military men and women in danger. If you are going to talk about what our military is capable of, or how we would go about invading or doing something with one of our enemies. And if that’s the case, it’s an it’s reckless, it’s frustrating, and it causes problems.”
Continuing her candidate points, Haley added, “And you know, we’re looking now, this is the second indictment, we’re looking at possibly a third indictment. Coming in with Georgia.”
There’s also a likely fourth indictment: the Special Counsel’s investigation into Trump’s actions surrounding the January 6 insurrection.
“My concern is not so much about how this plays out and what we do with it. My concern is about the direction of the country. The fact that we cannot have Biden win this election. We cannot go through Biden or Kamala Harris winning this election. We’ve got to have someone that can win a general election.”
The New York Times noted Monday, “the declared candidates for the presidency who are not Mr. Trump have divided into three camps regarding his federal indictment last Thursday: those who have strongly backed him and his insistence that the indictment is a politically driven means to deny him a second White House term, such as Vivek Ramaswamy; those who have urged Americans to take the charges seriously, such as Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson; and those who have straddled both camps, condemning the indictment but nudging voters to move past Mr. Trump’s leadership, such as Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.”
Indeed, Haley’s remarks Monday are far less supportive than they were on Friday when she said, “This is not how justice should be pursued in our country. The American people are exhausted by the prosecutorial overreach, double standards, and vendetta politics.”