Former Trump appointee, and former US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley has stated that Trump has no future in the Republican party and that ever since the 2020 election, it seems like she doesn’t know Trump anymore.
Haley, who harbors 2024 presidential hopes in a party that is still loyal to Trump, criticized Trump for his involvement in stoking the US Capitol riot in a new interview.
“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she told Politico magazine in an interview published Friday, February 12.
“He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Haley notably left his administration in 2018 on good terms with Trump, a contrast to many other officials who have publicly fallen out with their former boss.
Trump attacked former vice-president Mike Pence on Twitter on January 6 for doing his duty of presiding over Congress’ counting of the Electoral College votes, as the mob of supporters broke into the Capitol hoping to stop the certification, some of whom chanted death threats against Pence.
In the Politico interview, Haley expressed anger over Trump’s treatment of Pence and said she hasn’t spoken with Trump since then.
“When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” Haley told Politico.
“Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He’s been nothing but a good friend of that man. … I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”
She however stated that she believes “impeachment is a waste of time.”
Asked how Trump should then be held accountable, Haley replied, “I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated.”
“I think his business is suffering at this point. I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him,” she continued.
“I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving.”
Haley then predicted that Trump won’t run for federal office again and that the former President will not have a future in the Republican Party.
“I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” she said. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”
She acknowledged that “the love” Republicans have for Trump is “still very strong” and won’t “fall to the wayside.”
She continued, “Nor do I think the Republican Party is going to go back to the way it was before Donald Trump. I don’t think it should. I think what we need to do is take the good that he built, leave the bad that he did, and get back to a place where we can be a good, valuable, effective party.”
She added she’s “deeply disturbed” by what’s happened to Trump since the election, arguing “the person that I worked with is not the person that I have watched since the election.”
“Never did I think he would spiral out like this. … I don’t feel like I know who he is anymore,” she claimed.
“I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged,” Haley told the magazine.
Asked if she thought it was dangerous that Trump was spreading misinformation about the election, Haley replied, “He believes it” and compared it to: “That would be like you saying that grass is blue and you genuinely believing it. Is it irresponsible that you’re colorblind and you truly believe that?”
