Donald Trump may have clinched the Republican nomination a long
time ago,
but the primaries? They are still giving him a headache.
Folks, this week, Nikki Haley.
Yes, Nikki Haley. She actually received more than 20%
of the Indiana Republican primary vote.
This is despite dropping out more than two months ago,
and according to new reporting from the Wall Street Journal,
Haley has no intention of endorsing Trump,
at least for now. At a general retreat this coming
week.
Quote She isn't expected to discuss her political future or
encourage them to give two other campaigns.
NBC News has since confirmed this report.
Olivia Troy is back. I would also like to note,
I know there's reporting from Axios that says Nikki Haley
is on Donald the Trump campaigns list.
And I think the Trump campaign and Donald Trump,
very important language. I I highly doubt
Nikki Haley ain't on Donald Trump's list for anything.
That's just not happening, right?
I mean, come on,
you know the man, you know how he thinks,
how he operates. There's no way he's going to put
that kind of aggressive opponent on a ticket with him,
#1 and #2,
someone that he knows when he needs
to do certain things will do those certain things.
And that's not Nikki Haley.
But here's the problem with Nikki Haley.
You don't get to play it both ways.
You don't get to run the kind of campaign and
say the kind of things you did and and move
the country
towards your corner, only to then come out and go.
You know, I kind of like Donald Trump and I'm
going to endorse him because he's the party nominee.
And as the Wall Street Journal's reporting,
she's huddling with her donors and won't endorse Donald Trump
yet.
This yet is doing a lot of work.
Thank you. Alicia is doing a lot of work.
So what? How do you see this having been inside
that bubble and how
those machinations come about? What what do you think's going
on with Nikki and the campaign?
And the timing, 'cause this is what we're talking about
ultimately is with the timing of whatever she's going to
do,
which I think probably will be endorsing Trump.
Yeah. Look, I think she's what she's doing is she's
building out her ground work,
her network and building her own profile politically right behind
the scenes.
I think that she's, she's looking at the future.
What does this mean for her?
I think she is eyeing another run at the presidency
later on and she's just trying to figure out how
do I navigate this Donald Trump phenomenon that's pure for
a long time, probably will be here for a long
time after because it's bigger than just Trump.
Let's be honest, it's Trumpism as a whole.
But I think she's also kind of like my future
though
will be 0 if I don't fall in line and
support him.
And so I think we've talked about this before like,
and I get a lot of criticism for my from
my Republican colleagues that I am not all in on
Nikki Haley.
And I I I'm, you know,
as much as I would want to support someone like
her,
I just, I don't have respect.
If you're going to go out there and pretend that
you're this person with integrity and then take it all
back and come out and say you're going to fall
back in line in Bill Barr wound up doing Bill
Barr.
Yeah. And like, what does that mean for the voters,
the people that are voting and
supporting her still right now,
even though she's not really a candidate,
still, I worry about the direction that she's going to
lead those people when she does come out eventually and
support Donald Trump.
The way that's my concern,
the way that Chairman Steele qualifies,
the bar that you have set is he has described
himself as being greedy,
that it is not enough for him for Republicans to
come out and say they're not going to vote for
Donald Trump.
You have to go that extra step.
And sometimes I worry that the chairman is setting his
aspirations too high given the
trouble. But that's why I wanted to give credit where
credit was due.
Because this week you had the former Georgia Lieutenant governor
Jeff Duncan writing a piece.
Why I'm voting for Biden and other Republicans should too
from that piece.
Unlike Trump, I belong to the GOP my entire life.
I like that little burn slipped in there this November.
I am voting for a decent person I disagree with
on policy over a criminal defendant without a moral compass.
And my question to both of you is,
does that carve space out then for other Republicans to
do the same?
I think it does. And I'm I I really applaud
the Lieutenant,
Lieutenant governor, Thank you. Thank you so much.
Because that's the voice that we need for Republicans like
Olivia myself,
who have not stepped forward to step forward to give
them that permission structure,
that it's OK. Your house isn't gonna catch on fire
if you vote for Joe Biden.
Your neighborhoods aren't going to kick you out of the
neighborhood.
They're probably voting for Biden,
too. So everybody can just calm it down,
right? I mean, this is,
this is the permission structure that you need.
Look, we have policy disagreements with the Biden administration.
Certainly you can start from Afghanistan and you can go
to any number of other issues.
But I weigh that up against the guy who says
he wants to be a dictator.
And guess what? Biden wins every time.
I I don't know, maybe it's me,
but I think that's what we're looking for.
What do you, what do you think?
I think, you know, I think he talks about character
and that you know the office of the presidency,
it should be someone with character and I think that's
important and I don't.
I think what we're seeing is a a complete lack
of character across the Republican Party right now from a
lot of individuals
who have become sort of Co opted into the sting
for their own political cravenness and stature.
And, you know, I think I have a lot of
respect for Jeff Duncan.
I think, you know, it's hard in the world of
Republicans right now to take that stand.
And I'm glad that he's willing to be consistent.
You know, his own, you know,
friend, Governor Kemp, certainly, certainly wasn't.
You know, he just felt fell back in line even
though he faced what happened in the 2020 election,
which was super disappointing to watch him do that because
he knows first hand the danger of what Donald Trump
is and the danger he is to undermining our democracy.
You know, I saw that Jeff Duncan's predecessor
called him. You know, he said every village needs a
useful idiot.
I saw that quote about it,
and I would argue and flip the script on that
and say actually no.
I would argue and say that the idiot found a
useful village with all of these complicit and enablers across
the Republican Party who refused to chart a different path
for the party
she's talking about for y'all that misses.
She's talking about Donald Trump.
Donald Trump is an idiot and the villagers are are
are the Republican Party apparatus.
I mean there are there are many,
many, many. It is, it is the Jeff Duncan endorsement.
There are many warning signs for the Trump campaign.
I would note I have not heard them talking about
opening offices.
Right. The things that you need to do to win
a campaign are not hold rallies on the beach on
Saturday morning or you say that 10s of thousands of
people are coming, but we,
we, we, we will check it out.
We will check the numbers.
Fire Marshall. And I don't believe that that's what we're
going to hit.
The way you win campaigns is you open offices,
you knock doors, you hire staff and
there are you organize. And Democrats in Indiana,
for example, they had been organizing.
I mean they grew their their margins in
Marion County
in 2020 and Indiana Democrats have been targeting that for
years.
Marion County in Indiana is where Nikki Haley did
the best. She posted above a 30 point performance,
30 points in that specific county
to me that if if I was a Republican strategist,
I can't even get the comment out.
If it were me, I would be concerned
there there is no political ground game right now,
right? I think everyone is,
you know, whether it's, you know,
the only talking points they have are the election is
going to be stolen again,
everybody prepare election integrity. They're so worried about this election
integrity task wars at the RNC that they've started.
I think that is their focus.
And Lane, they're not out there talking to Americans about
this is actually what we're going to do about these
kitchen table issues that you're so worried about.
You're worried about inflation, you're worried about this.
They're not actually explaining what they're going to do to
fix the economy that they claim Joe Biden has been
so bad at.
Right. I mean, they're not actually out there connecting with
the voters like they need to be.
And you know, I I've said this before,
They've chosen to stay behind this useless leader,
and they will continue to lose elections because of it.
So why do you organize?
Well, you're just going to try to steal the election
anyway.
I mean, well, they're not.
You're going to lie. You're going to lie about it
anyway.
You've already, your lead dog is already telling us he's,
he's won the race. And if he,
you know, if it's not official come November,
then the whole system is rigged,
right? So why do I need to organize in Indiana
and Georgia and Arizona and Pennsylvania
when the plan is already in place to lie about
who won anyway?
So Chairman would say that's the road,
That's the road.