Nikki Haley, Despite Low Polls and No Wins, Vows to Keep Fighting Donald Trump

By Hamodia Staff

There don’t appear to be any wins on the horizon for Nikki Haley.

Those close to the former United Nations ambassador, the last major Republican candidate standing in Donald Trump’s path to the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, are privately bracing for a blowout loss in her home state’s primary election in South Carolina on Saturday. And they cannot name a state where she is likely to beat Trump in the coming weeks.

But in an emotional address on Tuesday, Haley declared, “I refuse to quit.”

And in an interview, she vowed to stay in the fight against Trump at least until after Super Tuesday’s slate of more than a dozen contests on March 5 — even if she suffers a big loss in her home state Saturday.

“Ten days after South Carolina, another 20 states vote. I mean, this isn’t Russia. We don’t want someone to go in and just get 99% of the vote,” Haley told The Associated Press. “What is the rush? Why is everybody so panicked about me having to get out of this race?”

In fact, some Republicans are encouraging Haley to stay in the campaign even if she continues to lose — potentially all the way to the Republican National Convention in July in the event the 77-year-old former president, perhaps the most volatile major party front-runner in U.S. history, becomes a convicted felon or stumbles into another major scandal.

As Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement presses for her exit, a defiant Haley on Tuesday repeatedly likened Trump to Democratic President Joe Biden — and both as too old, too divisive and too unpopular to be the only options for voters this fall.

She also pushed back when asked if there is any primary state where she can defeat Trump.

“Instead of asking me what states I’m gonna win, why don’t we ask how he’s going to win a general election after spending a full year in a courtroom?”

Trump, in recent days, has shown flashes of fury in response to Haley’s refusal to cede the nomination.

He called her “stupid” and “birdbrain” in a social media post over the weekend as part of a sustained campaign of personal insults. Some primary voters said Trump crossed the line earlier in the month when he highlighted the absence of Haley’s husband, Michael, who is in the midst of a yearlong stint with the South Carolina Army National Guard to Africa.

In a rare show of emotion, Haley acknowledged the personal toll on her family.

“It was hard for us to say goodbye to him the first time when he deployed to Afghanistan. It was even harder last summer when he deployed to Africa,” she said with glassy eyes, her voice cracking.

Ahead of the speech, Trump’s campaign released a memo predicting that Haley would be forced out of the race after losing her home state Saturday.

“The true ‘State’ of Nikki Haley’s campaign?” Trump’s campaign chiefs wrote. “Broken down, out of ideas, out of gas, and completely outperformed by every measure, by Donald Trump.”

Eager to pivot toward a general election matchup against Biden, the Republican former president is also taking aggressive steps to assume control of the Republican National Committee, the GOP’s nationwide political machine, which is supposed to stay neutral in presidential primary elections. Last week, Trump announced plans to install his campaign’s senior adviser Chris LaCivita, as RNC’s chief operating officer and daughter-in-law Lara Trump as the committee’s co-chair.

And there is every expectation that current Chair Ronna McDaniel will step down after Trump wins South Carolina’s primary and party officials will ultimately acquiesce to Trump’s wishes. Privately, Haley’s team concedes there is nothing it can do to stop the Trump takeover.

Speaking in South Carolina on Tuesday, Haley said she has “no fear of Trump’s retribution.”

“I feel no need to kiss the ring,” she said. “My own political future is of zero concern.”

Haley, in the interview, also warned her party against letting Trump raid the RNC’s coffers to pay for his legal fees while taking a short-term view of Trump’s political prospects.

Trump’s standing will fundamentally change if he is a convicted felon before Election Day, Haley said, acknowledging that such an outcome is a very real possibility as Trump navigates 91 felony charges across four separate criminal cases.

“People are not looking six months down the road when these court cases have taken place,” Haley said. “He’s going to be in a courtroom all of March, April, May and June. How in the world do you win a general election when these cases keep going and the judgments keep coming?”

Meanwhile, Biden was asked as he departed the White House on Tuesday whether he preferred to go up against Haley or Trump this fall.

“Oh, I don’t care,” the president said.

With reporting from wire services.