Nikki Haley is a Product of the Failed System – “Eight years ago, it was good to have a leader who broke things,” former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said at a gathering of prominent Jewish-American leaders recently. She was speaking about former President Donald J. Trump, against whom she’s running in the GOP Presidential Primary. “But right now, we need to have a leader who also knows how to put things back together.” Haley touted her foreign policy experience as a key reason for why she should become the next Republican presidential nominee.
Of course, left unsaid by Haley was how she gained that foreign policy experience. Under whose administration did she serve as the UN ambassador?
Oh, that’s right, it was during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Certainly, Haley’s criticism about Trump’s divisiveness and his courting of a seemingly endless cavalcade of controversy is fair. Her reasoning for choosing the Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas, Nev., in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history, to lob her caustic attacks at her old boss is incomprehensible.
But even more galling than her lack of tact was the fact that Haley’s one purported qualification for being made the Republican presidential nominee was that she had all this expansive foreign policy experience. That experience came from the fact that Haley was given the UN job by the man that she spent a portion of her speech criticizing as irresponsible.
It begs the question, at which point was Trump irresponsible, before or after he made Haley his UN representative?
Haley Represents the Old Guard
Nikki Haley is correct, of course.
We need more than a one-man-wrecking-crew in government today.
The system has been gutted by decades of bipartisan corruption (of which Nikki Haley was shamelessly a part), it has had its very legitimacy called into question by the forty-fifth president, and his successor, Joe Biden, has all but destroyed whatever faith Americans had in that system thanks to his legendary incompetence.
At the same time, Haley is a creature of the old guard. She’s also a dangerous manipulator. You see, in 2015, Haley was a rising star in the conservative movement. Viewed as a possible presidential candidate in her own right at the time, the then-South Carolina governor had rallied behind the presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who was running against Trump in 2016.
Back then, Haley loathed Donald Trump’s very being. She was one of the loudest Trump opponents in the GOP. And she was one of the final holdouts to his ultimate nomination in 2016 as the GOP candidate.
Yet, once Trump was the obvious GOP nominee, Haley went to work abandoning her previous “moral opposition” to Trump and embraced him. She went from principled conservative to obsequious Trump ego-massager in record time.
Because of her fawning sycophancy, Haley was awarded with a prestigious role as the UN ambassador. While at the United Nations, according to many who watched her operate up-close, the would-be first female president went about executing her own foreign policy, largely devoid from the will of her boss, Donald Trump.
After Haley had gotten her foreign policy credentials, she bailed from the chaotic Trump Administration, and went into the private sector. Leveraging her foreign policy experience, like all Swamp Dwellers, Haley joined the board of Boeing, advising them on lucrative defense contracts (and being paid handsomely for it).
Once she had made a sufficient amount of money and secured her personal financial position, Haley waited for the opportune time to cut ties with Boeing, lest her presence on the board be used by her political opponents to attack her.
Another opportunity arose: the tragic death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis Police custody. Insanely violent riots erupted across the country—indeed, the world—as a result of Floyd’s unfortunate death. When Boeing indicated they would take a conciliatory tone toward the rioters, Haley bailed. But she had been planning to leave Boeing almost from the moment she joined the board.
It was all very cynical.
Why Does Haley Think She’s the One to Lead Us?
It remains a mystery what Haley thinks she will do that’s so much greater than Trump or her other major GOP opponent, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis—other than that she will make warfare prettier than her opponents (did you know Nikki Haley is a woman? Well, that’s a key theme in her campaign).
Nikki Haley is a product of the same system that she claims is so corrupt. Plus, she’s clearly a neoconservative. That makes her dangerous and part of the GOP’s beautiful loser caucus.
Whatever chaos Trump represents, the fact remains that in foreign policy, Trump was just what this country needed. No new wars were initiated under his presidency.
Contrary to popular opinion, the forty-fifth president strengthened alliances. All but the most insane ideologue today could not acknowledge that Trump’s foreign policy worked (ironic, considering Trump’s utter lack of foreign policy credentials).
Nikki Haley is a Manipulator
With Nikki Haley, the GOP will get more of the same failed policies that it had gotten under George W. Bush. She’s a dangerous neoconservative who never met a war she didn’t support. And everything she believes runs counter to the “MAGA” agenda that Trump has championed.
Plus, Haley retains her undying Trump hatred that she’s had since 2015.
In other words, she’s a natural pick to be Trump’s vice-president in 2024, if Trump becomes the nominee.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor and an energy analyst at the The-Pipeline, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert occasionally serves as a Subject Matter Expert for various organizations, including the Department of Defense. He can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
