Nikki Haley got roasted for her embarrassing performance in the Nevada primary, but she was right about one thing: The contest was “rigged” for Donald Trump, who was not on the ballot Tuesday, but will be awarded the state’s 26 delegates Thursday in a caucus the party essentially blocked Haley from participating in. “We always knew Nevada was a scam,” Haley said on Fox Business Wednesday. “We’re not focused on Nevada. We never were.”
The comments, to some extent, were an attempt to save face after losing to “none of these candidates” by more than thirty points in the Silver State—a “brutal” finish, as the Trump campaign gloated. But the remarks also marked a new line of attack for Haley: After months of hesitating to go after Trump, she’s not only taking more direct aim at the frontrunner; she’s directing her ire at the party establishment that’s rallying around him, too. “It’s ironic for somebody who says that the election was stolen from him—he’s now showing that he’s going to bully his way through to try and win this election,” Haley told the New York Times Wednesday, noting the GOP’s further descent into disarray this past week. “Donald Trump has his fingerprints on all of it.”
“How much more chaos are Republicans willing to put up with?” she asked.
For now, their appetite seems bottomless: Everyone from Ronna McDaniel, who is said to be stepping down soon as chair of the Republican National Committee, to Mitch McConnell, who helped sink the bipartisan border deal he once supported, has continued to cave to Trump—even as his legal predicaments worsen following an appeals court ruling this week that obliterated his claim to “absolute immunity.” The decision could make it more likely that Trump will face trial in Jack Smith’s election subversion case before the election. And while the former president might aggressively maintain his innocence in public, he has privately fretted about a “likely” conviction in the felony case, as Axios reported last week. In rallying behind Trump, then, and helping pave his way to the nomination, the GOP is throwing itself behind a man who could “be a convicted felon when he gets on the stage to accept the Republican nomination for president,” as former rival Chris Christie predicted on CNN this week.
Haley’s campaign in recent weeks has come to sound like a desperate appeal to her party’s self-interest: “Everything he touches ends up in chaos,” Haley told the Times. “How many more times do we have to lose?” But unless she herself finds a way to win soon, Haley’s already-uphill climb to knock off Trump is going to get steeper and steeper.