‘Profile in Situational Courage’: Nikki Haley Will Back Former President Trump if he Runs in 2024

Nikki Haley has done it again. The former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former Governor of South Carolina has mastered the art of being for and against Donald Trump depending  on situation to situation, prompting MSNBC’s Brian Williams to dub her latest stratagem as a “profile in situational courage.” 

Less than two months ago, Haley attacked President Trump for inciting his supporters to march on Capitol Hill. But when answering a question from The Associated Press at the South Carolina State University on April 12, Haley said she would not seek her party’s nomination for president if Trump opts to run in 2024. 

When asked if she would support another White House bid from Trump, she replied in the affirmative. “If President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it,” she said. “That’s something that we’ll have a conversation about at some point, if that decision is something that has to be made.” These comments by Haley, considered one of the most high-profile potential 2024 contenders, once again confirmed the hold Trump has on the Republican Party. 

CNN notes that “Haley has often attempted to walk a fine line between allying herself with Trump — who remains a hugely popular figure within the party — while distancing herself enough to appeal to his Republican and moderate critics.” 

“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.”

A month after the Jan. 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill, Haley criticized Trump and appeared to be distancing from him. In an extended and detailed interview with Tim Alberta, published on Feb. 12, she admitted that Trump “let us down.” She continued: “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.”

On the first day of the Republic National Convention on Aug. 24, she defended President Donald Trump’s handling of the economy and foreign policy, and painted a picture of a dystopian America under Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’s leadership. “Joe Biden and the Democrats are still blaming America first,” she said. “Donald Trump has always put America first. He has earned four more years as president.”

Politico notes that since she joined the Trump administration as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, “Haley had navigated the Trump era with a singular shrewdness, messaging and maneuvering in ways that kept her in solid standing both with the GOP donor class as well as with the president and his base. She maintained a direct line to Trump, keeping private her candid criticisms of him, while publicly striking an air of detached deference.”

She was one of the few members of the Trump administration who left on good terms with her boss, unlike her other colleagues, many of whom engaged in public spats. When she resigned in 2018, the New York Times called her “that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact.”

In the Politico interview Alberta, who “spent nearly six hours talking with Haley on-the-record,” since last fall, confirmed that Haley is going to run for president in 2024. And he added: “She doesn’t know which Nikki Haley will be on the ballot. Will it be Haley who has proven so adaptive and so canny that she might accommodate herself to the dark realities of a Trump-dominated party? Will it be the Haley who is combative and confrontational and had a history of giving no quarter to xenophobes? Or will it be the Haley who refuses to choose between these characters, believing she can be everything to everyone?” Going by her latest remark, Haley’s 2024 bid apparently rests on Trump’s decision. At least, for now.