'MAGA nightmare' as Trump allies fight to keep 'establishment neocon' Nikki Haley off VP list

18 January 2024

Steve Bannon, the ultra-MAGA host of the "War Room" podcast and former White House chief strategist in the Trump Administration, has been claiming that establishment Republicans plan to pressure Donald Trump into making former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley his running mate if he wins the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. Bannon is vehemently anti- Haley, attacking her as an establishment neocon and arguing that only a true MAGA Republican should be on a Trump ticket.

Bannon said of Haley, "If Nikki Haley is in this administration, in any capacity, it will fail. Well, she's a viper. She's a viper. And once she gets in there, she'll try to run it as prime minister. She'll try to be Dick Cheney."

Bannon isn't the only Trump ally who is railing against Haley as a possible Trump running mate.

In an article published on November 18, Politico's Jonathan Martin reports that the "Stop Nikki" movement is gaining momentum among Trump allies who believe that Haley, as vice president, would undermine the MAGA movement.

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"As Nikki Haley emerges as the former president's most formidable opponent in the coming states and toughens her rhetoric," Martin explains, "her Trumpworld foes are intensifying their own efforts to block her from the consolation prize of the vice presidency. Haley's critics have even privately warned Trump that, were he to make Haley first in line to the presidency, he'd effectively be setting himself up for an intra-party coup, as GOP senators would use any legal or political pretext to remove him from office and elevate the more old guard-aligned Haley."

Those critics, according to Martin, range from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Florida) to Donald Trump Jr., who said that his father, in a second term, will not send the "next generation to die in yet another never-ending war."

Trump Jr. told Politico, "Nikki Haley wants to be in every war the world has to offer."

Similarly, Gaetz told Politico, "Nikki Haley as VP would be an establishment neocon fantasy and a MAGA nightmare. On Day 1, she would convert the Naval Observatory into an anti-Trump, resistance headquarters, undermining him at every step."

But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) said of the Stop Nikki movement, "The same people who don't like her don't like me."

Graham, who went from being a scathing critic of Trump in 2016 to being a devoted loyalist, believes that whether or not the former president would consider Haley as a running mate will have a lot to do with how bitter the GOP presidential primary becomes in the months ahead.

Graham told Politico, "I think he would pick her if he thought it would help him win. But the longer it goes and the more scar tissue accumulates, the less likely it is.”

Read Politico's full report at this link.

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