Speaker 1: 2024.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is really struggling.
She has now had a week to try to figure out an answer to what are the policy differences
between you and Donald Trump.
And she is still unable or refusing to cite any differences.
Now, I think this is more about strategy and the possibility that Nikki Haley is actually
running to be Trump's vice presidential nominee than it is about her inability to actually
come up with differences between what she would do and what Donald Trump would do.
But it's starting to get a little bit embarrassing.
So we're going to look at a clip from Fox News Sunday during which Nikki Haley was interviewed
by Fox host Shannon BREAM.
Now, you might remember that last week Nikki Haley was asked multiple times on days two
and three of her campaign, what are the differences between you and Donald Trump?
And she basically made it about identity.
She's younger.
Was the long and short of what she said, refusing to really criticize Donald Trump.
And what you have to understand is that this is very similar in some sense to what we started
to see in 2015 and 2016, which is it's a version of ignoring Trump.
Now it's a different version in 2015 2016.
Many of the Republican candidates ignored Trump because they didn't want to take him
seriously, and they assumed if we ignore him, he will go away.
And yet what Trump did was he won by attrition as one candidate would drop out.
He would pick up the vast majority of there, two or 3%, and then that would get him to
seven, eight, and then they would keep ignoring him and then someone else would drop out and
then he would pick up there one or 2% and that would get him to 910.
And you understand this is a different version of ignoring Trump, which is we don't like
Trump.
We know about the anti MAGA people in the Republican Party.
That's who we're targeting.
But we're also not going to really put a line in the sand and draw any kind of distinction
from Trump.
So will it work?
I don't think so, but I don't know that it's designed to work.
If you're Nikki Haley and you're running for VP.
This is arguably exactly what you have to do, but it is pathetic.
Take a look at this.
She says she's focused on Joe Biden.
The problem is she's not going to get a chance to face Joe Biden unless she wins the Republican
nomination.
Speaker 2: Clearly, you think you're a better option than he is or you wouldn't have gotten
into the race.
So where do you two differ?
Speaker 3: I don't focus on President Trump.
And it's amazing that the media wants to talk about that so.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not really amazing.
There are two candidates, you and Trump.
So if you're going to talk about this race at all 17 months out or whatever the natural
thing would be, you compare and contrast the two candidates.
She won't allow that because she will draw no distinction from Trump other than his age
and his gender.
Speaker 3: We'll have to do that through.
Speaker 2: The GOP primary.
You will have to focus on him and Governor Sanders or anybody else who gets in to get
to President Trump.
You will have to get through that field.
Speaker 3: My announcement was to a few thousand people in South Carolina.
I just had packed rooms in New Hampshire.
Not one person asked me about President Trump.
Everybody wanted to talk about Biden.
Everybody wanted to talk about the problems facing American families.
I focused on Joe Biden.
He's the one that's the president.
You know, I will tell you, I think Americans need to have options.
I think they need a new generation.
I think we need new energy going in.
I think we need to lead the status quo of the past and start looking ahead.
And that's what I'm going to do.
And as much as people want to talk about other opponents.
Speaker 1: There, it's the she acts almost like it makes no sense that one would talk
about the opponents in the race.
She's running.
She's running in the Republican primary.
So naturally, you would talk about her opponents.
Right now.
There's one.
His name is Donald.
Speaker 3: Trump, Bobby Moore.
Many of them are my friends.
My.
Speaker 1: They're my friends.
Speaker 3: Focus is on American families, how they're struggling and will remember.
Speaker 1: Last week, Donald Trump is my friend.
Listen, there's two possible other two there's two reasonable possibilities here that explain
this other than she's clueless.
One is she's not running for president.
She's running for BP.
And so the way to get in Trump's good graces is to do as well as she can in the primary
without attacking Donald Trump.
That's one possibility.
The second possibility is she's counting on Trump getting indicted and having to drop
out.
And by not attacking Trump, maybe she will end up being seen the most favorably by the
MAGA people, such that if Trump ends up indicted and dropping out, she will they will switch
to supporting her.
These are gambles I have no that whether it can work is predictive in nature and it really
depends on whether those things happen.
She also here's like a bonus clip.
During the same interview, she sort of couldn't explain why she was running, which is really
just a fail.
Check this out.
This is she she's asked like, why would someone vote for you?
And she's like, why not?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I want to put up something for The Wall Street Journal this week.
They said you had a great day, your great rollout day, but they said you have to provide
a rationale for your candidacy that you haven't done yet.
They said you've got to answer this question about why you versus anybody else in the in
the GOP field.
You know, they're talking about the fact that you say, you know, America first, America
should be powerful.
Those are things that any GOP candidate is going to say.
So why you?
Speaker 3: Why not me?
You know, I am a the wife of a combat veteran.
I'm a mother of two children, one who's getting married.
And I see how hard it is for her to look at buying a home.
Speaker 1: What are these credentials in Nikki Haley's mind to say, make her the president.
Speaker 3: That's in college and I see what he's dealing with, with woke education?
You know, I'm.
Speaker 1: Her kid is dealing with woke education.
So it follows logically that you would vote for Nikki Haley, huh?
Speaker 3: The daughter of immigrant parents who are upset by what's happening at the border.
Speaker 1: That's identity politics, of course.
Speaker 3: I don't want to wait for someone else to fix this.
I want to make sure we get in there and fix this.
I'm not a lawyer.
I'm an accountant.
I've never worked in DC, and I think it's time that we start putting a fire under what's
happening in Congress.
I think we need term limits.
I think we need mental competency tests for for people over the age of 75.
And I think we need far more transparency than we're seeing today.
And what I do strongly believe is the American people need options.
I don't think you have to be 80 years old to be in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1: This is like getting sad.
This is really getting sad.
Why should anybody vote for you?
Well, why not?
And it's good to have an option that is under 80 years old.
Whoa.
Pretty compelling stuff.
I really like the vision of America that Nikki Haley is laying out here.
Speaker 3: And I think it's time for us to start getting aggressive, getting back to
what it means to end socialism in this country.
Speaker 1: What when did socialism start in this country?
That would be my question to Nikki Haley.
This is really sad and pathetic.
And, you know, the most positive spin you can put on this is that this is a play.
On if Trump's indicted, she'll just be there or she'll be Trump's VP.
But this is a campaign that is going nowhere very, very quickly.
And we're going to continue following it and seeing if Nikki Haley is interested in putting
together any kind of coherent explanation as to why she's running.