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Just one year ago, Donald Trump and his team were openly welcoming Nikki Haley into the GOP presidential primary, even as the former president was privately trashing her for being a “two-faced” phony who didn’t know when to stop turning against — then back to — him.
For much of 2023, Trump, his senior staff, and outside supporters mostly left Haley, Trump’s former United Nations ambassador, alone — sometimes at the specific urging of Trump advisers, according to two Trump allies and a screenshot of messages reviewed by Rolling Stone. Some on Team Trump argued to MAGA surrogates that any minor polling boost for her would help bleed support from Trump’s top 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — and that they should resist the impulse to “dunk on” or “light up” Haley just yet. Trump himself similarly told some close associates and GOP politicians in mid-2023 that they didn’t “need to attack” Haley, and that for the most part, his allies should let her, DeSantis, and the rest of the field “tear each other apart,” according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
Flash forward a year, and DeSantis’ presidential bid now appears doomed on the doorstep of the Iowa caucuses. With Haley’s poll numbers getting a bounce in New Hampshire, Iowa, and elsewhere, Team Trump has assessed it doesn’t need her anymore to double as one of their secret weapons to “ratfuck” DeSantis. Trump and his reelection operations are now in full-blown “wreck-Nikki-Haley mode,” one adviser to the ex-president says, and they’re pouring millions into ads and other efforts to bury her.
“Team Trump smartly used Nikki Haley as a weapon of mass destruction to destroy DeSantis’ coalition, knowing that in the end Haley would never be able to put together a winning coalition in the primary, given all the weaknesses she has on the right,” says a source close to the Trump campaign.
The Trump camp’s hard pivot to Haley as a main focus of its ire is evident in new TV ads and websites it recently built to attack the former South Carolina governor. On HaleyFacts.com, registered in late December and unveiled on Friday, the Trump campaign highlighted Haley’s repeated promises to cut Social Security benefits. The site hosts an ad the Trump campaign has run in New Hampshire, claiming that Haley would “end” the promise of a “secure retirement” — an attack line recently echoed by the Trump-aligned super PAC, Make America Great Again Inc.
Trump’s campaign released an ad calling Haley “weak” on immigration, accusing her of opposing Trump’s border wall and travel ban policies — claims that were largely debunked by Politifact. MAGA Inc. has been running a similar anti-Haley ad, including in New Hampshire, that pays homage to Trump’s “poisoning the blood” rhetoric about undocumented immigrants.
Trump’s campaign staff also briefly ran a spoof site purporting to show Haley as President Joe Biden’s running mate. BidenHaley.org ripped content from the Biden 2024 campaign site and edited a picture to place Haley standing next to Biden, instead of Vice President Kamala Harris, according to cybersecurity researcher Kyle Ehmke. The site, which was briefly live last week, now redirects visitors to Trump’s main campaign site.
As for Trump himself, in the past few weeks he has been asking some advisers, with significantly greater frequency than he has before, about how Haley is doing in the polls in this month’s upcoming New Hampshire primary, according to a person close to Trump.
“She’s going to fade,” John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster, tells Rolling Stone. “In the meantime, she’s not what she says she is to voters — and when voters find out where she really is on the issues, our numbers show that she will fade, and our…
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