



The Tweeter Nikki Haley

If you want to be on the inside track for 2024, the next best thing to being vice president is being the subject of rumors about replacing the vice president. Even if you have to crank the rumor mill yourself.

In late August, eight months out of her job in the Trump administration as ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley tweeted: “Enough of the false rumors. Vice President Pence has been a dear friend of mine for years … He has my complete support.” As there were no such widely discussed rumors at the time, Haley’s tweet served only to prompt new rumors. The White House tried to shut down the chatter immediately, directing presidential aide Kellyanne Conway to post on Twitter, “Trump-PENCE2020.” Three months later, the anonymous author of “A Warning” wrote, “On more than one occasion, Trump has discussed with staff the possibility of dropping Vice President Pence” and that “Haley was under active consideration to step in as vice president.” (This is what prompted Trump to say Pence is “our man.”)

Haley attracts attention because, as a former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor, she has one the best résumés in the Republican Party. And she is a rare woman of color in a party that struggles mightily to win the votes of women and minorities.

Haley spent 2019 trying to carefully calibrate a distinctive political profile in the embryonic field: a Republican who is loyal to Trump without always agreeing with Trump.

You could see this effort at work during Trump’s summer controversy over Baltimore, when the president tweeted that the city was a “rat and rodent infested mess” that had been failed by its congressman, Elijah Cummings, (who died in October). At first, Haley defended Trump from charges of racism on her Twitter feed: “Instead of all of this back and forth about who everyone thinks is racist and whose [sic] not, the President just offered to help the people of Baltimore. They should take him up on it.” But a few days later, when Trump posted a sarcastic tweet in response to news of an attempted intrusion of Cummings’ home, Haley posted a scolding reply: “This is so unnecessary.”

Similarly, in Haley’s new book, “With All Due Respect,” she largely defended Trump and revealed that she rebuffed the entreaties of then chief of staff John Kelly and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to help them circumvent Trump on matters such as the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement. But she also put a little distance between herself and Trump on foreign relations. She wrote unequivocally, “The truth was the Russia did meddle in our elections.” She said she chided Trump to his face about his infamous Helsinki news conference, telling him that he “made it sound like we were beholden” to Russia. Yet she also said Trump appreciated her candor, and she charitably assessed his overall approach: “He was just trying to keep communication open with Putin, just as he did with Kim Jong Un and Chinese president Xi Jinping.”

Perhaps at some point, her attempts to please Republicans from all camps won’t withstand tough questioning. But for now, she ends 2019 indisputably on the 2024 short list.

What to watch for in 2020: She says Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. Will she call out any Russian meddling in 2020, and risk Trump’s Twitter wrath?