How Team Trump hopes to crush Nikki Haley's presidential campaign: report

Republican Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ex-governor of South Carolina, is expected to formally announce her presidential run on Wednesday, February 15. This will make Haley the second candidate to officially enter the 2024 GOP presidential primary, although Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be gearing up to enter that primary as well.

According to Daily Beast reporters Jake Lahut and Zachary Petrizzo, former President Donald Trump and his allies are hoping to derail Haley’s campaign before it gains momentum. Trump was the first GOP candidate to officially announce his 2024 presidential run.

“With the former UN ambassador telegraphing her presidential announcement, the Trump campaign is champing at the bit to finally vanquish an enemy after a sleepy first few months,” Lahut and Petrizzo report in an article published on February 6. “Those familiar with the discussions on how to handle Trump’s first 2024 primary opponent see Haley as a weak candidate offering the former president a chance to settle a score, as well as an opportunity to experiment with new tactics.”

READ MORE:Nikki Haley schemed with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to replace Pence as VP: Pompeo book

According to the Beast reporters, Trump’s campaign views Haley as “a weak opponent he can easily dispense with.”

A source close to Trump, quoted anonymously, told the Beast, “They’ll definitely have a nickname for her. He had a nickname for every one of his opponents in 2016, so that tactic — while some of his tactics have proven to be ineffective or people have learned to deal with him — the naming works.”

A GOP strategist, also interviewed on condition of anonymity, sees Haley as “the Carly Fiorina of 2024” — a reference to the former Hewlett Packard CEO who ran against Trump in 2016’s GOP presidential primary. In 2020, the conservative Fiorina endorsed now-President Joe Biden.

That strategist told the Beast, “Trump will lean in on her past liberal stances on Black Lives Matter, crime, and immigration that are very weak. He will also surely play up her political flip-flops and promising not to run, now that she is jumping in. Basically, he will paint her as just another politician who doesn’t believe anything and only wants power.”

READ MORE: Nikki Haley 'embodies the collapse' of the GOP: Republican strategist

Read The Daily Beast’s full report at this link.