I think Donald Trump wants Nikki
Haley in the 2024 race.
This week, Haley,
a former South
Carolina governor
and Trump's former ambassador
to the U.N.,
announced her intention to run
with a formal announcement to come later
this month.
This despite
previously pledging that she wouldn't do
so if Trump were running again.
President Trump has been withering
about people
who he endorsed or appointed
becoming his opponents.
Witness Ronda sanctimonious.
And yet, when it comes to Haley,
he seems less concerned.
Here's what he said
on his campaign plane.
Last weekend.
Nikki Haley called me the other day
to talk to me.
I said, look, you know, go buy your heart
if you want to run.
She's publicly saying,
I would never run against my president.
He was a great president.
Go buy your heart.
He said, I, for one, am not surprised.
I don't think he sees her as a threat.
In fact, her presence
probably helps him in his mind.
Haley has to contend with the fact
that she may be up against her
state's senator, Tim Scott.
Should he get in?
And that Trump's
candidacy already has the support
of two top South
Carolina Republicans, its other Senator,
Lindsey Graham, and Governor
Henry McMaster.
Also, Trump has this bloc of voters
who are seemingly locked in with him.
No matter what.
According to a recent Monmouth poll, 22%
of Republican primary voters
say they'll support Trump
even if he runs as an independent.
That might be a low number.
It's an immovable number, it seems.
It suggests that it could be even higher.
Plus,
if 2024 is a rematch with Joe Biden.
And Emerson poll recently
found that 44% said they'd support Trump.
41% said Biden.
But let's remember that
if Haley barely registers in the polls
thus far, it could all change on a dime.
Making predictions
this early in a presidential
race is often folly
based on polling
or even on the list of who has announced.
Jeff Greenfield
pointed all of this out
in a recent Politico column
titled A Warning to the Media
About the Next Presidential Race.
There are plenty of historical examples
of frontrunners at this stage.
Of the game who never got close.
Among them, you'll remember
in 2003,
Vermont Governor Howard Dean
was dominating the polls
and had won the endorsement of both
Al Gore and Bill Bradley,
the prior contenders for the nomination.
People were asking
if the race was already over.
And then came the Iowa caucuses,
where Dean ran
into ran a weak
third to John
Kerry and John Edwards,
who ended up being the president
and VP nominees.
Then four years later,
the media was saying
that the race was America's mayor,
Rudy Giuliani.
Against Hillary Clinton.
That is, until primary voters
weighed in and nominated John McCain
and Barack Obama.
Even as recently as this time in 2019.
Joe Biden's candidacy was perceived
by many as being dead on arrival.
So all of this early polling
is to be taken with a grain of salt.
I get it.
But for Trump to prevail as the nominee
he needs to diminish the strength
of any single opponent like Ron DeSantis.
And to accomplish that,
he needs Nikki Haley in the race
just like he needs Mike
Pence and Sununu and Hogan and
Christie and everybody else,
as many people as he can fit
on that stage to divvy up the pie,
just like he did in 2016
for Donald Trump in 20, 24.
It's the more the merrier.
Joining me now is David
Byler,
data analyst and political columnist
for The Washington Post.
His latest piece
is this Trump's Republican
opponents are making a painfully obvious
mistake.
David, Donald Trump is under fire
from a variety of investigations
and much has been written
about Republicans
who want to move on from him.
But in this piece,
you point out that you think he's
actually in a stronger position
than he was at this stage in 2016.
How come?
Well, part of it
is exactly what you pointed out.
It's that there is a chunk
of the Republican establishment
that is already endorsing him,
that already likes him,
that's already behind him.
And if you look at his polling numbers
at this point
in 2016
and the 2016 cycle compared to now,
he has a higher favorability
rating than he did back then.
Over 70% of the Republican Party
use him favorably.
A lot of Republican voters
really liked how he governed as president
and really have warm
feelings towards him.
So I think that you know
he could lose
he could go down in flames
as many are predicting.
But he also has a path to a majority.
He doesn't have the same resistance of,
oh, he's just a reality TV star or oh,
this is just a stunt.
These last few years
have transformed him into really
the party's elder statesman, for
better or worse.
So let's put up on the screen
where things stood
in the 2016 cycle
so it was literally
it was February of 2015.
He wasn't even registering.
People like me
were laughing
at the prospect of him
getting in the race,
much less succeeding. Undecided.
Was it 21%?
The Bush reference
there, of course, is Jeb.
Fast forward now to where we are today
for comparison.
And all of a sudden
you'll see that Donald Trump's at 46%,
Ron DeSantis at 31.
And I think to my point you know
then you've got undecided at $0.08
at six.
Haley at three, Cruz
at two, Rubio at two.
Pompeo
all those others
beyond Trump and beyond DeSantis.
They need to hope that either Trump fades
because he's got issues,
indictments, something else,
or that DeSantis has a glass jaw, right?
Because if Trump remains where he is
and DeSantis remains where he is,
there's not enough oxygen
left in the room.
Right.
Exactly.
As you pointed out,
it's still very early going.
But at this point,
the dynamics of the race are very,
very different.
In that 2016 race,
you had a fractured field now
and you kept on having a fractured field.
You kept on having sort of Trump
skeptical Republicans flipping around.
Do I like Ben Carson?
Do I like John Kasich?
Do I like Marco Rubio?
Do I like Ted Cruz?
Right now you have a two man race.
You have Trump with his faction
and you have the scientist
sort of leading
the pack of Trump alternatives
and everybody else
in that single digit range.
So it's just a fundamentally
different race at this moment.
Okay.
And that is the mistake
that you think his would be
opponents have not recognized.
They don't get how the dynamics
have shifted.
Just take 15 seconds on that.
Yeah.
I mean, there's two sides of the coin.
Trump is no longer
an insurgent candidate
and his opposition is no longer
so divided.
That makes for a completely
different primary.
David Byler,
thank you so much for your experience
and Expertize. We appreciate it.
Thank you.