Donald Trump once promoted Republican Nikki Haley. Now she is up against the ex-US President in the US election campaign. To do this, she must master the internal party primaries.
Former US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has announced her candidacy for the 2024 presidential election. It’s time for a new generation of leaders, the Republican said in a video on Tuesday morning (local time). Haley is the first candidate to run against former US President Donald Trump. Her announcement was actually expected in a speech on Wednesday.
Almost two years ago, Nikki Haley still sounded very clear. “I would not run if President Trump ran,” she said. At the beginning of February, he posted the video from April 2021 online, in which Haley ruled out a candidacy against him, and wrote sarcastically: “Nikki has to follow her heart, not her honor. She should definitely compete!” Now the 51-year-old has to assert herself in party primaries against Trump, who has already announced his candidacy.
It was Trump who had brought Haley to international fame. As president, he made the then governor of South Carolina ambassador to the United Nations in New York in early 2017. Haley stood out on the diplomatic stage with her clear edge and often undiplomatic language.
Nikki Haley is already dishing out
The conservative politician with Indian roots sees herself as a representative of a new generation that should lead the fortunes of the USA in the future. “I don’t think you have to be 80 to be a leader in Washington DC,” she recently told Fox News. “I think we need a young generation (…) that really starts to fix things.”
The sentence with age can be understood as a dig at 80-year-old President Joe Biden, but of course also at 76-year-old Trump. There are currently indications that there could be a new duel between the two veteran rivals in 2024.
Shifting Trump supporter
Her relationship with Trump has always been divided. During the 2016 presidential campaign, she supported his opponents, first Marco Rubio and then Ted Cruz – and said of Trump that he represented “everything a governor would not want in a president”. After her resignation as UN ambassador, she repeatedly supported the Trump administration, even if she found critical words about the right-wing populist after the Capitol stormed on January 6, 2021.
“He took a path that he shouldn’t have taken and we shouldn’t have followed him and we shouldn’t have listened to him,” she told the Politico news portal. “And we must never allow something like this to happen again.”
Now Haley is the first notable Republican to stand up to Trump in the primary. In polls on the potential Republican candidate field for 2024, however, she is far behind Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence by single-digit percentages. The mother of two, who is married to a National Guard officer, has at best an outsider chance.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
