The Dispatch Podcast - Countdown Until Super Tuesday | Interview: Nikki Haley

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

Former South Carolina Gov. and GOP candidate Nikki Haley joins David Drucker to discuss why she's still in the race, why her voters aren't committed to voting for Trump if she drops out, and how the GOP  has changed from its small government roots. The Agenda: - In what direction is the party going -Bloated government under Republicans -America's relationship with Putin  -Why Trump won't win the primary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Save when you fuel up for your next road trip. Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your PetroPoint. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-C-Canada. Conditions apply. Welcome to Washington. I'm David Drucker and thanks for joining us for another edition of the Dispatch Podcast.

On this episode, Republican presidential contender, Nikki Haley. We sat down with Haley Friday afternoon after she rallied with Republican voters in Washington, as voting got underway in the D.C. GOP primary. That's right, Washington, D.C. has a Republican party. This was part of her cross-country campaign blitz ahead of Super Tuesday. Now, with so many questions we could have asked Haley, and believe me, we considered most of them, and we did so as a team, we decided to focus on the state of an evolving Republican Party as it relates to Haley's uphill battle for the nomination against frontrunner Donald Trump. we recognize that that means there are probably a bunch of questions.

You, our dispatch subscribers, and other listeners, believe we should have asked. And we take that to heart. We get it. However, with a limited amount of time, we wanted to focus on something important, or at least that we believe is important, and that we believe hasn't received enough attention. Nonetheless, complaints, comments? We'll see you in the comments section, and I'll do my best to respond to a as many people as I can.

And now, Nikki Haley. Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, former Trump cabinet official, Nikki Haley, thanks so much for joining us on the dispatch podcast. Thanks so much for having me. well listen um i know that you're jetting around the country so i'm going to try and be efficient

with my time which is why you're periodically going to see me reading questions so i want this to be conversational feel free to hit me over the head or tell me i'm all wrong and we don't know what we're talking about um but i at least wanted to try and know what i was doing so forgive the cheat sheet here uh i want to talk to you about you i think want to talk about and that is the sort of state of the republican party and as it relates to your candidacy for president you're running for the Republican nomination for president. And earlier today during its discussion with reporters

here in Washington, where we're recording this, you said that voters supporting you want a candidate who promotes fiscal discipline, American global leadership, who delivers solutions versus just preening for the television cameras. I think you used the word peacocking, but preening works.

I like that one too. And then you said this, quote, we used to be about fiscal discipline, meaning Republicans. Quote, we used to be about fiscal discipline. We used to be about smaller government, and we used to be about making sure that taxpayers had more of their money than a bloated government, end quote. Now, like you said in South Carolina, the voters, you know, I was there in Charleston on Saturday night, the voter supporting you are not some tiny group, and I agree with you. But neither, I want to ask you, neither is the

larger outright majority of voters that has been supporting Donald Trump and all these primaries. So, when did you begin to notice that the party was changing? And secondarily, where does that leave you? I think that the conversation of the Republican Party has been changing for a while, but it's starting to get more and more stark. And I think the focus is when I look at this primary, and that's what primaries are, as you decide which direction you want your party to go in, which direction you want your country to go in.

And I look at the fact that, you know, under Donald Trump, he grew government. He put us $8 trillion in debt in just four years, more than any other president. He didn't drain the swamp. He didn't clean the agencies. He didn't give more control to the states. He just grew it. I want to focus on fiscal discipline, stopping the wasteful spending, spending, paying down our debt,

shrinking the size of government, taking as many federal programs as we can, and sending them down to the state so that the people. people in the states decide those resources rather than DC bureaucrats, things like education and health care and welfare and mental health, those types of things. And I want to make sure that people start to feel government working for them instead of them feeling like they work for government. And I see that all this bloated government happened under Trump. The Republicans are continuing that process. It started with the $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus. And it's just continued, Well, it was even that was part of it, but it's continued to roll.

And now you see they opened up earmarks for the first time in 10 years. And it's that no one's talking about fiscal discipline. Trump's not talking about it. Republicans are no longer talking about it. It's just not an issue. The second thing is you look at, you know, Trump doesn't believe in peace through strength. He believes in retreating back and focusing just on America. Well, I do believe in America first.

I think you can't take care of anybody else if you don't take care of America. But I don't think America should ever be so arrogant to think we don't need friends. What has kept us strong for so long is our alliances. So when Trump went and said that he would encourage Putin to invade our allies, that goes against everything that I believe in. Because my focus is, I think a president should always prevent war. You should always build your alliances so that your enemies don't even think to come near. you. And that's just not happening. And then you look at the idea of what the Republican Party

was supposed to be through its infrastructure. The RNC was always designed to help races up and down the ticket. And now they're saying the RNC is just going to be about Donald Trump. And that changes everything. And so it really is a difference of, I want a new way forward for the Republican party. This is continuing to be a way backward where it's just about Donald Trump. So everything that you are saying and look you and I are roughly the same age I came of age as a political observer in the 1980s because I was just

that kind of nerd who paid attention to this stuff the new way forward you want was the way forward for 40 years and it strikes me based on your description which I don't necessarily argue with that the Republican Party is no longer a center right party it's a populist

party so look obviously you've put yourself in the arena you're running for president but like what do Republicans like you do about the direction of the party given where the majority of the votes are going and the fact that they're going to a man now on his third consecutive presidential run the third time he's been the favorite for the nomination what do you guys do i think it's why he won't win i mean you look at the situation that you know if we've gotten 30 to 40 percent in all the early states he doesn't get 40 percent in michigan He's campaigned for eight years. I campaigned for two days, and I got 30% of the vote. And when people come to our events, they're intense, they're passionate, and they say they want to vote for someone. And that's why they're coming out for us.

They want to vote for in America where the dream is still possible. They want to vote for a country where we get things done instead of hating each other. They want to vote for something. So, yes, those principles are still the base principles of the Republican Party that we had. But, well, I'm saying what I want. Yes, that's the basis. But it's a newer way of looking at it. We want to modernize.

We want to continue those basic principles, but modernize them so that we continue to grow the tent and do that. That's what you've got the 30 and 40 percent saying. And then when you have Donald Trump saying, if you support her, you're barred permanently from MAGA. You can't win a presidential election if you are going to push people out of the clock. On that point, I've spoken to dozens, well, maybe hundreds at this point, but at least dozens and dozens of voters who are supporting you or we're thinking of supporting you and are attracted to you and your message in multiple states. And one of the things I've started to pick up on, and this is particularly true in South Carolina last week, is that they don't feel welcome in today's Republican Party. And by the way, this goes beyond who they're going to vote for if their choice is only what, you know, 70% of the country says they don't want. These are not people that told me they're becoming Democrats or voting for Joe Biden.

They can't do that. And it's some of them might reluctantly vote for Trump if they feel like that would be their only choice. But they're telling me they don't feel welcome. And so I wanted to ask you, what are they supposed to do? I mean, you know, I had a woman come up to me in an event, not too. long ago, and she said, I've voted Republican all my life. And she said, and my friends are now saying I'm a Democrat because I don't want to vote for Trump. And that's basically what is happening. I mean, it's happening on the left, too. You've got a lot of people leaving the Democrat

Party because it's getting so extreme. But you've got people who are going to leave the Republican Party because they don't want it to be about one person. You're in the middle of a multi-state swing. This race isn't over. But if you're not. the nominee, what do you tell your supporters to do? Look, they're going to make up their own minds, their individuals, but what do you tell these people to do when they don't feel welcome in the party they've been participating in for all these years? Don't expect them to automatically vote with the party just because if they feel unwanted, if they feel unheard, if they feel like the Republican Party's not even trying to get them, they will not, they either won't vote,

which I hope they do. We should always vote or they will find some other person to vote for. And so I think that, look, this is the reason I fight, the reason I'm so passionate about this is it's more than just the Republican Party. It is about the country. I do believe that the Republican values are the right ones. I do think that our focus should be lifting up everybody, not just a certain few. I do think it should be about government being closest to the people and us protecting American, preventing war, and all of those things.

But I also think the tone at the top matters. You know, we had, in South Carolina, we had multiple crises. We had a couple of hurricanes. We had a thousand-year flood where the state was underwater. We had the shooting of Walter Scott killed by a dirty cop. We had a school shooting. We had Mother Emanuel where we lost nine amazing souls. At any one of those, we could have fallen to our knees.

When that happened at Mother Emanuel, and I called for the Confederate flag to come down, that was on the heels of Ferguson. We would turn on the news and every city was on fire. Why didn't we burn? We didn't have riots. We had vigils. We didn't have protests. We had prayer.

The tone at the top matters. And right now, whether it's Joe Biden calling us, his opponent's fascist, or Donald Trump calling his opponent's vermin. Nobody wants that. Like, when we think of our kids, that's not the miracle we want our kids to grow up. But in the context of a Republican primary is your style of Republican, your voters' style of Republican that I would say is a Reagan style of Republican. Is that even viable anymore in a Republican primary? We're going to find out. And just as on a side note here, has there been any outreach from the Trump campaign to your campaign in any way, should

paper form about coming together eventually, no matter who wins, about how you look ahead to 2024, any outreach? No, I mean, I think what's interesting is, you know, after the last election, he said, you know, it's clear our party's unified. Well, just because Donald Trump says something doesn't make it true. Actually, a lot of times it's not true. And you can't ignore that you don't have 30 to 40 percent of the vote. You can't ignore that in the Marquette poll, last week, you know, your margin of error. And it shows I defeat Joe Biden by 18 points. You can't sit there and ignore the fact that we have lost multiple races in multiple states ever since Donald Trump became president. We just continue to lose 2018, 2020, 2020, even a couple weeks ago when we lost

the vote on Israel. We lost the vote on on myorkas. The RNC chair lost her job. He had his fingerprints on all of that. We can't keep losing. But Donald Trump, in a way has has republicans and republicans i say like you meaning your faction of republicans kind of over a barrel right because every time uh there's a discussion about you know maybe he won't be the nominee or maybe the party will go a different direction he threatens to run as an independent he threatens to leave the party we always see the reports he famously has never signed any of these rnc pledges to support the nominee no matter who they are you've signed them your your your your fellow candidates that are now out of the race sign them right so i mean there's there come a point when

you have to say to the to trump and his faction of supporters well you can't count on us either i mean don't think we're going to go away and be quiet don't think we're suddenly going to sing you know kumbaya and and this is going to go away you have a massive amount of people who are saying we don't like that republicans no longer care about how much they're spending we don't like that republicans don't want allies we don't like that republicans are okay with deciding if you do like Donald Trump, you're a Republican, and if you don't want to be with Donald Trump, you're a Democrat. We don't like that. And it is my job and my duty to make sure that we fight for these people and that they have a voice and that they know there's a place. They're not wrong.

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of a website or domain. Is there a line that shouldn't be crossed? Look, in every primary, especially when it's competitive, when somebody fights as hard is you're fighting. And of course, Donald Trump is famously a fighter. They're always hard feelings. It's bitter. And then people kind of come together because they say to themselves, all right, you're basically a good person and you basically believe what I believe. That's harder with Trump, particularly from the perspective of voters supporting you. I mean, but it's always asked about, you know, the question is always posed that, you know, well, you don't want to make their voters

angry. You know, they've been left behind. They've been forgotten. And that's why they're supporting Trump. So you just kind of have to go along. What about your voters? Is there a line at which they shouldn't be asked to cross? I mean, is there a certain behavior on the part of the former president, on the part of people supporting him, that people should start to say you can't expect the voters who have been supporting Nikki Haley and state after state? You can't expect them to cross certain lines either. I mean, is the line where he criticizes military members? Is the line where he goes and does. name-calling, is the line where he goes in size with Putin over our allies, is the line where he says the reason that blacks like him is because he was arrested, is the line the fact that, you know, the supporters of an opponent are barred permanently from his club, is the line the fact that we desperately need to secure the border and he told Republicans not to do anything

until he was until the general election because it would hurt him, is the line the fact that you're paying campaign contributions towards your personal court cases, I don't know what that line is, but I will tell you, all of these people that are coming out, they want to vote for someone. That's what they've said to me over and over again, as they're thankful they have someone who has a vision, who is a happy warrior, who wants to continue to grow America and make her the best country in the world. That's what they want. Is there a line for you? I mean, to me, it's not personal as much as this is about my kids, too. I mean, that's why I'm doing this.

I want my kids to have a better country than what we have right now. I guess what I'm saying is I would never ask you if you. Then don't. I would never ask you if you could vote for President Joe Biden because you are at odds on so many key policy issues. But when you have a Republican nominee who's willing to spend like he's the king of debt, is what he's like to refer to himself as, at least when interest rates were low, we'll see. And that plays footsie with Vladimir Putin.

At what point do you say, well, I can't vote for Biden, but on the issues that matter to me the most, the reason why I'm in public life and putting up with all this stuff, we have fundamental disagreements. Are there lines for you? I mean, those are major policy issues I care about.

Those are major policy issues I think every American family cares about. They don't want their kids having to pay all this debt. They don't like the fact that Congress can't get anything done. They don't like the fact that it's more about what somebody says on TV than not. So, yes, I mean, I wouldn't be running if I didn't think there was a problem. I don't want Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Neither do 70% of Americans, by the way, don't want Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

But they are two 80-year-olds that refuse to walk away because it's all about them. And this isn't about them. And, you know, at some point, we have got to pass this group along and go towards a new generational leader. It's the only way we're going to write this ship. I have said multiple times, we are a ship with the hole in it. Donald Trump is that hole. We can ignore it, and we will go down with the ship. Or we can say there's a chance to save ourselves and go in a new direction.

That's what we're trying to offer. There must be some conspiracy against Generation X. That's what I think the real problem is here. Okay. You and I are both Generation X. So for all the kids at home that don't understand that joke, which you may or may not find funny, since early January, you have said in your stump speech, I don't know if you said in South Carolina, but you said it a lot in New Hampshire, that if President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump get the next four years in office, you would say America won't survive it. What do you mean by that? I'm incredibly worried. I think it's not about Joe Biden. I think, first of all, Donald Trump, I don't think he can win a general election. And I don't think Joe Biden will be the nominee. I think we will be looking at a president Kamala Harris and you will see us lean socialist left. If it is Donald Trump, then I think you are looking at a fiscal cliff we will fall off of. I think that you are looking at us tiptoeing towards war because we are leaving our allies and our allies are leaving us. And I think that you are going to continue to have this division and separation and hatred that is happening in our country that is going to not have Congress get absolutely anything done because we're not going to win races. And it's going to either be we're going to lose the House in the Senate or it's going to be such a small margin. We can't get anything done.

But when you say the country won't survive, you mean we'll be diminished, but you don't actually think the country falls apart. I think this is about freedom. This is about economic freedom, which we don't have right now, because we are actually having to borrow money to make our interest payments. We're spending more in interest than we are in our defense budget. I would say that's pretty dire. That's a national security threat. I think this is about the fact that we could be on the verge of war, because if everybody wants to continue to give this narrative of we can't help Ukraine, Putin's going to do exactly what he said he's going to do, which is Poland and the Baltimore. politics are next. Those are NATO countries, and we're going to have American war. We can't have them. And you don't think that's hyperbole, that Putin would actually test NATO's resolve to respond to an armed invasion of a NATO country. I saw this every day at the UN. Dictators, terrorists, and thugs always tell us what they're going to do. We just have to listen. Hamas said they were going to go into Israel. They did. China said they were going to take Hong Kong. It happened during COVID. Russia said they were going to invade Ukraine. We watched it. China says Taiwan is next. We better believe

them. Russia said once they take Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. Don't doubt what Vladimir Putin is saying. He has said this for a long time. He's made actions toward what he wants to do is weaken our alliance, which is happening, divided up so that he can start making moves like he did with Crimea. So he can start getting more and more strength in the ways that he's doing that. We're seeing him now start to move into Moldo. Okay, related to our Putin, our mini Putin discussion here, I want to make a point of saying, I never invite people on the dispatch podcast to talk about somebody else. So I didn't invite you on the podcast to talk about Donald Trump, but I'm going to ask you one Donald Trump question because you were closely with him

on national security as his, as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. And it was, and it's not always the case in Republican administrations. It was a cabinet post. And you particularly worked with him on Russia policy. I worked with him on everything very closely. Yeah. So what is the deal with his bromance of Putin? That man will jawbone anybody. He'll jawbone strangers in Indiana who tweet something mean about him that he catches wind of. He will jawbone Xi Jinping, even though he compliments him. He'll still jawbone him. He'll jawbone anybody. But Putin. Now, I just have to say, I'm a Cold War kid, right? Like, Republicans were put on earth to cut taxes and hate Russians.

That's just kind of the way it is, whether you agree with taxes or not, cutting taxes or not. So do you have any insight into why the Putin bromance? Donald Trump gets weak in the needs when it comes to Putin. He has, and all I can say is I wrote about this in my book. when he had that press conference with Putin in health thinking, I immediately made an appointment to go sit down with him. And I said, what was that? And he said, what was what?

And I said, whatever that was, I said, look like a bromance. It looked like y'all were, like, together. And he said, and he looked at it. chief of staff and said, did it? And I said, tell him it did. And I said, don't buy into what he is selling you. He is lying. That's what Putin does. But Trump admires dictators. He loves their power. He has said that he thinks President Xi, he likes that President Xi that the people have to listen to him and do what he says. He's always admired what he calls strong men. I can't explain it. I don't know why, but when I say I am fighting for freedom, I'm fighting for freedom because

I don't like those dictators and tyrants who control their people. I want people to have the freedom to live and breathe and say what they want to say and do what they want to do without anybody getting in the way. Donald Trump admires these people, and it's unfortunate, and I think he's wrong, and that's why I called him out. All right, let's get back to the 2024 race. Thanks for indulging my one Trump question. You're blitzing the country, you're advertising, you're attracting crowds that look, by any measure, I mentioned this, it occurred to me on Saturday in Charleston that if you just dropped in from Mars and knew nothing and showed up at one of your events and said, do you think she can win?

Yeah, there's a lot of people here. They're really happy. She looks happy, so clearly things must be going well. Do we think Super Tuesday we might finally start to see you win some primaries? I hope so. I mean, that's the whole focus is we're trying to make this as competitive. as we can. I mean, look, we spent a lot of time in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. You know, we were only able to campaign two days in Michigan. You know, we were there in Virginia,

yes, just yesterday, but we had over 2,000 people. Yeah, I want to ask you about this. You know, you would, obviously, until people started voting in Iowa this year, you'd never lost a race. So you're very familiar with what winning votes looks like. What do you, we've sort of just talked around this. What do you make of the first? fact that even though you haven't won a primary yet, and even though polling suggests your odds are long, that you keep getting so much attendance, at least by conventional candidate standards, nobody fills an arena like Trump usually. And the fact that I've watched people there, they're happy.

Like, these are not, you know, I know what it looks like when it's like, well, I came because I didn't want them to feel bad, but ugh, I'm like, they're happy. And I've talked to voters who have even said to me, forgive me for this, I don't think she can win, but I hope she keeps running because somebody needs to say what she's saying. So what do you, how do you account for events that look like yours, even though your odds are long? I think that people are hopeful. I mean, I can tell you the things they say to me. They'll say, thank you for giving me someone to vote for. Thank you for seeing the direction America should go. Thank you for speaking truth to power. Like those are all the things. Thank you. Thank you. for being someone my kids can look up to. I mean, all of these things are what they continue to say. And they love being there because we're talking about going forward and not talking about the past. Joe Biden and Donald Trump live in the past. That's all they talk about is what was done to them, what happened to them, what they think they have to fix or vengeance or whatever. They want someone who looks to the future and sees a bright future, not a dark future, not one that is,

you know, in shambles, a bright future. And I give them that because it is possible. I think we live in the best country in the world. You know, it's amazing to me that everybody was so quick to say, oh, she should get out after Iowa. She should get out after New Hampshire. She should get out after South Carolina. How blessed are we that we have elections? Did it ever occur to you? Did you ever say to yourself, what do I want to do? What are my long-term plans? No. No, because we have a country to save. And when you have a country to save, it's more than about yourself. It's about what you're trying to convey, what you're trying to get people to see, to show them a way forward that is possible. Given how big your faction of voters is, again, not a majority, but not a tiny minority,

as you've said. Are you surprised you don't have any more endorsements from members of Congress except for your friend, Ralph Norman? No, because I have never had the political elite in anything I've ever done. At my first race, I ran against the longest serving legislator in South Carolina in a primary. No one was with me. When I ran for governor, I was a Tea Party candidate against a lieutenant governor, attorney general, very popular congressman and a state senator. I had the only endorsement then was Ralph Norman and a senator and a house member. That was it out of everybody else. So when I ran this time, I was not looking to go grab endorsements. I don't want their endorsement. Donald Trump surrounded himself by congressional members that have gotten nothing

done. He surrounded himself by congressional members who have spent into oblivion. He surrounded himself by congressional members who are okay walking away from our allies. I don't want them. What I do want are real normal people who see the fact that America can do better than what we're doing right now. And look, the elite don't want me because I want term limits. They don't want me because I'm fighting for mental competency test for anyone over 75. They don't want me because I don't think they should be able to trade in the stock market. They don't want me because I think that the best way to fix VA health care is to have them have to get their health care from the VA. They don't like that I call them out on spending, Republicans and Democrats.

And I have always called out anybody who was doing something wrong. I did it as governor. I had no political friends when I was governor, but guess what? I had high approval rating as governor because the people knew I was fighting for them. Another argument you have made, and it's been a key argument of yours, is that Donald Trump cannot win a general election. And look, I can see polls as well as anybody. You do a lot better than him versus Joe Biden in places that it matters nationally, just about anywhere. But he's been leading Joe Biden, Donald Trump, has, and the real clear politics average since September.

He is doing better than margin of error in some of these swing states like Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, at least those. And he's still winning, although it's margin of error in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. That's made it hard for you to make the electability argument, don't you think? I mean, if you're trying to persuade people to support you instead of Donald Trump on the issue of electability, for people that might prefer Trump but worry about his electability, they can now say he's been beating Biden for months. I mean, look at how poorly Joe Biden is performing. I mean, it's like running against a rock.

Like, you could, like. That would make your argument easier, though. If he was performing better, they'd say, oh, my. But Joe Biden is not going to be the candidate. I have said from the very beginning, the party that gets rid of their 80-year-old candidate is the party that wins. Joe Biden is not going to be the candidate. You can assume it's going to be Kamala Harris

and it could be Gavin Newsom. My bets are on Kamala Harris. And you think she can beat Donald Trump? I think anybody else will beat Donald Trump. Anybody else. And Kamala Harris is not a good candidate. But I am telling you, the only reason that Donald Trump could beat

Joe Biden is because Joe Biden by the special counsel themselves says that he's mentally deficient. and that he is, you know, declining. But that's what happens when you're in your 80s. It's going to happen to Trump too soon. It's what, it's part of it. I'm saying we need someone who can put in eight ears, day and night, taking on the hard issues without the negativity, without the baggage, without the vendettas, and just produce for the American people.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump, neither one of them can do that. Okay, and finally, Nikki Haley, before I let you go, and I protect myself against assault from your staff that needs to get you to Charlotte, I believe. You entered this race a year ago and two weeks, so not quite 13 months, but a little bit more than 12 months. To bring our discussion back to how it began and end it that way,

what have you learned about the Republican Party after a year on the trail in hundreds of town halls and events and conversations with voters, what have you learned about the Republican Party that as much as you probably knew going into this that you did not know and that you're going to take away from this experience when lose or draw? I mean, just I have so much gratitude.

I mean, everybody should go to all of these states and listen to these families and what they care about. The overwhelming sense is from the younger generation, they're truly worried. They're worried about their future. They're worried about this debt. They're worried that they'll ever be able to afford a home. They're worried about getting a job. From parents like me, they see how chaotic things are.

They know their kids haven't felt normal. And they want stability. And they don't feel that. And in terms of like the older generation, they look back and say, what went so wrong? Like every group feels it in some way and every group knows things aren't right. Now is just the chance to say, but how do we fix it? And I think that's what the American people are deciding. Is which direction do we go? Do we do more of the same or do we try something new? It's pretty cool that 30 to 40% of people in these early states want something new. No, it's not 50%. I give it

to Donald Trump that he won. But don't ignore that 30 to 40%. That is not a small number. That's not a number that's going to go away after an election. That's not a number that's going to stop using the power of their voice because they are just now saying no more. They are just now saying we're tired of Republicans and Democrats not listening to us. And they're moving forward. And I think that they're going to continue to do that regardless. And I hope so. Like this is something that we should get people to do. that's what makes America better. We should never think we have to live this way because this isn't the way

that our kids deserve to live. We need a responsible America. And you know what else? Our friends and allies around the world are going, what the hell just happened? What has happened to America? That they no longer want to be our friend, that they are falling off a fiscal cliff,

that they are so distracted? Is it surprising to you that they're saying all of these things because of what's going on with the Republican Party. They're not saying it. I mean, look, the Democrats have their issues. But they're not saying this because Democrats are really acting that much different than they've ever acted, right? They're saying it because it's the center right party in the United States that has changed its approach to these key issues. No, I think that that has been the alarm bells. That's the hole in the ship that they

notice. But don't give the Democrats a pass. Look at how far left they have gone. I mean, I have had a number of people say, I can't be with the Democrat Party anymore. Guess what? That's such an opportunity for Republicans. It's such an opportunity to bring people into our fold, to get them to come see the way that we see. And Republicans are throwing that away. It is amazing to me. We're getting people who are looking for a home, whether that's Republicans who are disenfranchised with what's happened with Trump and Congress, or whether it's Democrat. who are saying this leftist slant and this socialism is not what we ever wanted or whether it's independence going both sides are crazy like every you've got a massive number of people that are

looking for a home and we owe it to them to help them find that home i think it's important and i think they're i think that they know that we have to go in a new direction that's not a bad thing so look i mean i think a lot of people want to make this about and i've said this they want to make this my running about being anti-Trump. This is not anti-Trump. If I was anti-Trump, I'd be Chris Christie. Chris Christie was anti-Trust. This is about being pro-America

and seeing that we're getting away from our values that made this country so great in the first place. Nikki Haley, thanks so much for joining the Dispatch podcast. Thanks for having me. Thank you.