In a Truth Social post, Donald Trump finally added former competitor Nikki Haley to what seems to be his permanent blacklist, which has significant implications for Haley’s future 2028 presidential prospects.
Trump and Haley obviously have a complicated history.
She left his administration in 2019 in apparently good graces with the president (The New York Times notes she was particularly close to Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump) and seemed to stay largely above the fray of contentious politics, respected by establishment Republicans and the diplomatic world at broad, if not MAGA’s isolationist elements.
At the time of her departure, Trump said, “She’s done a fantastic job…. we’re all happy for you in one way, but we hate to lose you.”
And note just how friendly Trump was in this joint appearance discussing her resignation, in which the president said she’d been “very special to me” and “done an incredible job” in her role.
“She’s a fantastic person, very importantly, but she also is somebody who gets it…. hopefully, you’ll be be coming back at some point.”
In resigning without apparently significant friction (there were some private disputes over potential sanctions on Russia but they stayed mostly in-house), Haley was in somewhat rarefied air, considering many of Trump’s high profile administration officials were fired or resigned in protest.
In fact, it’s hard to think of a higher profile name beginning, serving, and ending their tenure, who were simultaneously respected by the president, establishment Republicans, and international diplomatic allies alike.
But not surprisingly, that all changed when she ran against him for president, and during the course of the campaign answered what had been the big question looming over her political future – would she run representing a clean break from Trump or try to court the MAGA wing as a less-Trumpian Trump (it’s notable that the answer wasn’t clear, even after the January 6th riots, when even her criticism of the president was relatively muted, calling it “not his finest hour“).
That question was impeccably handled by Tim Alberta in this wonderful piece “Nikki Haley’s Time for Choosing.
Well, she answered that question in the 2024 nomination race.
She didn’t just break from Trump in her 2024 run, she also served as his harshest critic in the race and, as such, became the vessel for the hopes of the Never Trump movement, including GOP members of the Senate.
Haley’s bid lasted until after Super Tuesday’s results — long after her fellow competitors had dropped out and endorsed Trump in an apparent bid to retain their future relevance in the MAGA movement.
In fact, even after it was clear Trump would win the nomination, Haley remained in the race, as if a voice crying in the wilderness, and the longer she stayed, the dimmer her future prospects within the MAGA movement.
And thus, over the primary, her bid took on the aura of a symbolic and not competitive one, which is a key difference.
Trump is known for granting forgiveness for competitive bids that turn into eventual embraces. But symbolic opposition that seem more about principle than winning? Not so much.
And true to form with her clean break, when Haley finally dropped out after Super Tuesday, she notably declined to endorse him with CBS News noting at the time.
Two sources close to Haley say she is eager to remain part of the GOP conversation, is proud of being the last contender standing against Trump and is not ruling out anything moving forward. Her top allies believe her run cements her as the standard bearer for traditional Republican values.
In other words, she’d finally decided on a path – she would not embrace Donald Trump in the way his former competitors did, and thus, seemed consigned to the establishment lane forever, at her own choice.
Even though she finally endorsed him in May of 2024, it hardly came with the show of fealty expressed by his former opponents, as Haley told the press:
“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me, and not assume that they’re just going to be with him, and I genuinely hope he does that.”
At first, there was speculation of a unity ticket wherein Trump would pick her as Veep, addressing his perceived shortcomings with women and centrists.
As the convention approached, there appeared to be late momentum for the potential alliance, but Donald Trump Jr. blasted the idea, calling her a “puppet of Democrat billionaires and warmongers,” while Tucker Carlson’s opposition to her was so deep that he even went so far as to say he wouldn’t vote for Trump if he chose her.
In the end, of course, Trump passed her over, but Haley still attended the RNC convention and offered a strong endorsement speech, which nevertheless failed to change MAGA’s impressions of her.
And indeed, Haley continued criticizing him when she felt it was appropriate (even in the month prior to the election), while supporting his bid for president and offering to help campaign for him, though the request from the Trump team apparently never materialized, and it turned out that Trump did just fine with the demographic Haley was supposed to help him with.
Post-election, Haley hosted a weekly radio show on SiriusXM from September 2024 through inauguration day that was consistent with her messaging during the general election. She didn’t turn up the volume on her support for Trump in the afterglow of his win, nor did she generate much in the way of criticism beyond her normal concerns.
In short, Haley – who’d long been speculated as a more politic and ambitious political figure – seemed to finally decide and follow through with conscience-based messaging.
No, she never went full Liz Cheney, but she never embraced MAGA, either.
The big question for her career moving forward was whether the deep opposition to her from key voices in the MAGA movement would extend to Trump himself, who for all his bluster, is far more globalist in policy than the isolationists fueling his movement.
After all, Haley never attacked Trump in the way Liz Cheney, General Mattis, Mitt Romney, or John Bolton did.
In short, Trump didn’t seem to have blacklisted the competitor he called “birdbrain” during the course of their campaign.
Well…
Now he officially seems to have blacklisted her.
With this Truth Social post, Trump lumps her with the Cheneys and Romneys and Milley’s of the world.
2028 TAKE-AWAY: If Trump’s second term turns into something of a success, it’s not clear whether Haley runs in 2028 and almost impossible to see how the new, populist Republican party embraces her.
Does Haley hold particular working class appeal? Not according to her 2024 race, where her outperformance came from college-educated moderates – not lower income or Hispanic voters.
The only scenario where Haley is a viable candidate, again, comes from the prospect of Trump’s second term coming apart and a more traditional Republican party re-emerging.
While the first part of that scenario is an open question, the traditional Republican party is starting to look increasingly unlikely to re-form – even in the absence of a Trump disaster.
Nevertheless, if it does, no one could claim to have offered a more consistent message, beginning in the 2024 race through now than Haley.
[Screencap: Haley and Trump, after she’d announced she’d be leaving his administration.]
