Today, Explained - Nikki Haley kicks off a Republican mutiny

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, is running for president. Vox’s Andrew Prokop says she’s likely the first of many prominent Republicans to challenge Trump. This episode was produced by Miles Bryan, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Robert Mounsey, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained   Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, former ambassador to the United Nations, is running for president on a platform of generational change. The 51-year-old Haley took the stage in Charleston today to Survivor's 1982 banger Eye of the Tiger and aimed fire at our elderly states, and women. We'll have term limits for Congress and mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old. Haley famously has never lost a political election. The stakes are nothing less than our survival. And you and I and every American is being summoned to bold action. And so I have an announcement to make.

This announcement makes her the first leading Republican to challenge Donald Trump in 2024. And today on Today Explained, we will ask, what has Nikki Haley started? It's coming up. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever. Want more ways to follow your faves?

Check out our new player prop tracking with real-time notifications. Or how about more ways to customize your casino page with our new favorite and recently played games tabs. And to top it all off, quick and secure withdrawals. Get more everything with FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600. Visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Jennifer Berry-Hawes is a reporter with ProPublica.

She also worked for the Post and Courier newspaper out of Charleston, South Carolina, for 24 years. And so she is very familiar with Nikki Haley, and she says of Haley's run, I think we should take her very seriously. She's not someone who would have jumped into the race if she didn't see a really clear path to winning. And also just having watched her for a better part of two decades now, she has won every race that she got into. I love surprising people.

I love letting them know what I'm capable of. And I love challenging myself to prove to them so that they can be proud. She's not somebody who gets off her talking points easily. She's very practiced and disciplined on staying on her message. And she also knows how to stand out as a woman without making that the cause du jour. You talk about what you call the A word, ambition. And you actually call yourself something different, something that starts with the letter B. Badass. So she plays that role just enough, I think, to appeal particularly to women without presenting herself as the woman candidate. When people refer to it as ambitious, I've heard that all my life.

She's so ambitious. No, I'm passionate. I love what I do. I throw myself into it. So I prefer badass. What is Nikki Haley's origin story? So her parents moved to a small town in South Carolina called Bamberg in 1969. They are both from India. Bamberg is a rural community. It was just around the time of desegregation. Her father was a college professor who took a job at Voorhees College, which is a small, historically Black college in an adjoining or nearby rural town. So here comes a family that is practicing the Sikh faith. They arrive in this town that is still pretty divided by Black and White lines of segregation. And at first it was very difficult for her.

She tells stories about feeling very much like an outsider. We weren't white enough to be white. We weren't black enough to be black. We were the only Indian family. My father wore a turban. He still does to this day. My mom at the time wore a sari. And I remember we would get teased and I would leave the playground and come home. And I remember my mom would always say, your job is not to show them how you're different. Your job is to show them how you're similar.

She describes this slow process of being accepted into the school, but for a long time feeling very much as she puts it, like a brown girl in a black and white world. And so that was her introduction to life. Her family was very close and eventually became part of the white community in this town of Bamberg. She went to Clemson University. She met her future husband there, did ultimately convert to Christianity, became an accountant herself, and really made all of the right moves to jump into politics in South Carolina. I, and it seems like much of the rest of the country, became really interested in Nikki Haley in 2015 after a white man killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston. Until that point, South Carolina had flown a Confederate flag above its statehouse,

and then Nikki Haley decided it had to come down. Tell me what happened there. A number of years before the church shooting, the flag flew over the statehouse dome, and there was a compromise to bring it down and fly it out front. So at the time of the church shooting, the flag flew in front of the state house. There was obviously a time period of just tremendous grief. And Haley went to all nine of the funerals. She was very present and visible as sort of this mourner in chief. We woke up today and the heart and soul of South Carolina was broken.

She said, for instance, things like, you know, this happened on my watch, but our state is better than this. We're not going to riot and have violence. But very soon after, there became pressure for her to call for removing the flag from the statehouse. And that was a very dicey, politically wrought moment because the last governor, Republican governor who led the charge for that was not reelected. But I think for Haley, she saw that there really was not another option. She initially said things like that she didn't feel pressure to bring the flag down before because business leaders had not really had it top of mind. But after the shooting, that changed. You know, Dylan Roof had taken all of these photographs of himself holding a Confederate flag, and he had an emblem of one on his license plate. So she was presented with this decision, which to my mind,

she really had no decision. Because at that point to stand and say, no, we're keeping the flag, despite what white supremacists like Dylann Roof think it symbolizes, would have really been a very untenable position for her. Today, we are here in a moment of unity in our state without ill will to say it's time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds. All right. So that was 2015. And then by 2016, Donald Trump is the Republican Party's standard bearer. How did Nikki Haley feel about Donald Trump early on? She was not a supporter. You know, she really criticized him. And one of the things that I thought stood out that might be interesting now moving forward, watching how she

handles things, was one thing she called him out for was just the tenor of his communications, the tenor of his speech. In 2016, she campaigned for Florida Senator Marco Rubio and against Donald Trump. When candidate Trump tweeted back, the people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley, she replied with the withering put-down beloved by Southern women. Bless your heart. And she really promoted the idea that political speech should remain, you know, civil. And in South Carolina, there's still a lot of importance placed on civil communications. I have always kicked with a smile. When it became

publicly very different was when, you know, he was in discussions with her about her becoming the U.N. ambassador. And Donald Trump did tap her to become ambassador to the United Nations. Nikki Haley at that point didn't have what we might classically call diplomatic experience. How did she do at that job? From watching it here in South Carolina, my impression was that she was given very high marks for her performance overall, especially as someone who wasn't expected to go in and really know what she was doing. I think she was really proud of the way that she handled that job and the fact that she was able to operate with a considerable amount of independence from Trump. I said, well, I'm not going to be a wallflower or a talking head.

I need to be able to say what I think. And he said, Nikki, that's exactly why I want you to do this. And he was true to his word from the first day to the last day. I think she was also proud that she was able to position herself as a woman operating in this field, in this realm, with independence and not just taking direction from him, which isn't to say she wasn't taking direction from him, but I think she felt like she was able to present herself as her own person capable of doing the job. She left that job in 2018. And what has she been up to since?

Since Haley left the ambassadorship, she has been campaigning around the country, building her personal brand. It's worth noting that she initially said she was not going to run against former President Trump if he decided to run. I would not run if President Trump ran. And over the course of the past couple years, she has told us that she was thinking about it, pondering it, deciding what to do. And in the meantime, she's been going around the country campaigning for other candidates. Do we know what her relationship with Trump is like right now? She apparently called him to let him know that she was going to announce she was running.

He basically, you know, said, you do you. Nikki Haley called me the other day to talk to me. I talked to her for a little while. But I said, look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run. It seems as if maybe it's not quite as hostile, if not warm and fuzzy. But, you know, he didn't jump onto Twitter and start blasting her right away.

Hmm. Interesting, because he might have. Jennifer, let me ask you a last question. When a woman runs for president in this country and people don't think she can win for whatever reason, you will start to hear talk about, well, she knows she can't win. She's running for vice president. Do you think Nikki Haley is really running to win the presidency? I do. I do. I just don't see her as someone who's running to be vice president. She's very much someone who's of the mind that, you know, women should run for office or run for whatever it is that's meaningful to them as women and expect to win. So for her to go presenting to other women, you should run, but really you just want something lesser or you would take something lesser. And the men are

assumed to get the number one position. That's just really not her messaging. That's not the way she's presented herself at all. It's not to say she wouldn't accept that later if that becomes clear that's the best she's likely to do. But I don't see her running position right out of the gate. Jennifer Berry-Hawes of ProPublica, also a longtime reporter for The Post and Courier in Charleston, SC. Coming up next, the Republican establishment's theory of everything. No, their theory of how they're going to win the presidency in 2024. Andrew Prokop will explain the plan.

Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions and automate expense reporting so you can stop wasting time at the end of every month. And now you can get $250 when you join Ramp. You can go to ramp.com slash explained, ramp.com slash explained, R-A-M m p.com slash explained cards issued by Sutton Bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply bet MGM authorized gaming partner of the NBA has your back all season long. From tip-off to the final buzzer, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.

That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM. And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style, there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk, an authorized gaming partner of the NBA.

BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King. Andrew Prokop of Vox. So Nikki Haley has announced she is running to be the Republican nominee. Donald Trump has already announced. And so it will just be those two, right?

No, not exactly. There is expected to be a veritable parade of other contenders joining the race. So the most conversation right now is about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. He's been looming over the race to a significant extent. Florida is where woke goes to die. Donors and Republican power players expect him to announce a campaign, perhaps this spring.

But there's also another group of people in the Nikki Haley category, people who are somewhat notable, not quite viewed as formidable challengers to Trump just yet, but they're going to try their luck. They include actually another politician from South Carolina, Senator Tim Scott. Gas is high, electricity is high, eggs in California is almost $10. We have to do better. We deserve better. There are the governors, Larry Hogan of Maryland,

Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia. We have runaway crime in our neighborhoods and they demean and demoralize police. We have chaos in the world and they make America weaker. Then there's another former Trump administration official, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Every day was a privilege to serve. I was the Secretary of State for a thousand days. I wasn't about to give up one single second of it to focus on anything but doing my duty to the country. And there is the former Vice President Mike Pence.

I've sought to practice the kind of politics that reflects, I think, the civility and respect the American people show one another. If we choose to run, we won't run against anyone. And there could be more. You've been reporting, Andrew, on what big donors are doing, where they're putting their dollars, whom they are giving their attention to. Which big donors have you been looking at? So the really big Republican power players are the network of conservative groups that was started by the Koch brothers, now just Charles Koch because his brother David passed away, and also the anti-tax group, the Club for Growth. These are organizations that play in electoral politics to the tune of spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. And so they can make a big impact. And right now, the word is that both of them are going to try to get someone who is not

named Donald Trump to be the 2024 Republican nominee. Oh, OK. So before we get to who might be, is this a change for either of those groups, either Koch or the Club for Growth? Who were they backing in 2016? Koch stayed neutral in 2016. He was never a big fan of Trump because Koch is more from the libertarian tradition of the Republican Party. And he didn't like Trump's skepticism towards free trade policy and other entitlement cuts and other traditional economically conservative positions. And the Club for Growth, they endorsed Ted Cruz in 2016, but pretty late in late March.

So they did not intervene too early last time. Do they have a plan to do things differently this time? And what are they going to do differently to get what they want? So I don't know their specific plans and what exactly they will do. But I do know that there is a theory that's in many elite Republican circles about what went wrong in 2016. They have an understanding that mistakes were made on their parts, and they believe that Trump won because there were too many candidates in the race in 2016. Someday we will have a Republican presidential frontrunner. Someday. and that the anti-Trump faction in the party and among the elites, who were most party elites last time, they failed to consolidate early enough around one challenger to Trump. Look at this national Quinnipiac poll.

Five candidates at 10%. Jeb Bush won them. Governor Huckabee, Senator Rubio, Governor Walker, Ben Carson. No frontrunner. So in this telling, Trump just kept on winning primaries and caucuses with 33% of the vote, 35% of the vote. And then this winning helped make him look more like a winner and get more support while his opponents remained divided. And in the end, he just kind of steamroller to the nomination that way.

Please clap. Please. The Republican establishment has an interesting thesis, which is in 2016, the place where we messed up was we just had too many people in the primary. And that is why Donald Trump won. Does your analysis bear this out? Do you agree with them? I don't agree with this. Huh.

My read is that what the 2016 primaries show is that the party elites are far more limited in their sway over the Republican voters than was generally believed. That there were, in fact, many attacks on Donald Trump. There was a lot of criticism about Donald Trump. Fox News, at various points, tried to criticize Trump harshly and to convince his viewers that he was not a reliable Republican, that he was undesirable in various ways. You've called women you don't like fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals. But it didn't work. Their viewers loved him,

and eventually they changed their coverage to avoid alienating their viewers. More to the point, what we actually saw when these candidates dropped out of the race was that it was wrong to think of the Republican voters as 33% for Trump, 67% against Trump. Because when some of these other candidates who were getting 10%, 15% of the vote dropped out, Trump ended up increasing his support. Some of those voters for, say, Marco Rubio or Chris Christie had Trump as their second choice. And so when these candidates dropped out, Trump kept rising. OK, so if you disagree with the establishment theory, you're saying they don't have as much control as they think they do. They sure didn't in 2016.

Is what you're imagining a repeat of 2016? We've got the same guy, Donald Trump. Donald Trump is the nominee again. This is what voters want. Well, that's the big question. I do think there are reasons to expect that 2024 may well be a lot different than 2016. The Trump of 2024 is a different person than 2016. He has some more strengths, as in he's no longer an outside figure who is perhaps a little scary. Instead, almost all Republican voters have cast a ballot for Trump at this point. He also has some very serious weaknesses. His support, as you can see in polls, is the worst it's been since he won

the nomination, essentially. Among Republicans, Republican-leaning independents, 49% say they prefer someone other than Trump in 2024. I think most importantly, though, there are more doubts about his electoral strength. He lost in 2020, and then he and his specific chosen candidates in 2022 often fell short. Trump himself wasn't on the ballot, but he tried aggressively to play in a lot of these primaries and elect some mini Trumps. He broke every record. Come on up here, Herschel Walker. Come up here. And often they flop. NBC News projects Democratic incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock has defeated his Republican challenger, Herschel Walker.

There is an argument that's going to be made by these challengers to Trump that he is a loser and that if Republicans want to beat Biden, they should maybe pick someone who did not lose to Joe Biden just a few years ago. And if a bunch of Republicans jump in this time around, what do you think that means? I think a big difference right now is that last time, it wasn't really even clear who the Republican frontrunner was. But right now, the frontrunner is pretty clearly Trump. But the leading anti-Trump contender

does seem at this point to be Ron DeSantis. And DeSantis is a bit of a different figure than those establishment choices that flopped so badly last time. DeSantis has more juice with the Republican base. He could flop. He could suffer under Trump's attacks, which have already begun. But he is at least starting from a stronger point as the what's believed now to be the consensus anti-Trump alternative than anyone was in 2016. Is he the consensus for the establishment groups you've been looking into? Coke, Club for Growth? Are they lining up behind DeSantis?

Not yet. They want to keep their options open and they are saying they want to talk to several candidates and get a better sense of which positions they're running on and what their electoral strengths are and so on. And I think that's reasonable at this point in the year. You know, we won't be seeing like huge ad campaigns probably until much later on. So these groups will really be able to make their impact to the extent they have any later. This Republican establishment, it's been a while since they've picked a winner for the presidency.

How much does this Republican establishment, these big groups, how much do they still matter? I think there's an argument that they matter less than at any recent point. Trump essentially appealed straight to the voters and through conservative media organizations to the base. The establishment has kind of been struggling on how to deal with that, struggling about whether they can, in fact, take back some semblance of power and control. And they're going to try to, but I think in the end, it really is just going to come down to the voters. The real question is whether DeSantis or somebody else, because it's possible that perhaps someone will catch fire later on that we're not expecting yet, will be able to persuade voters that, yes,

they are a strong alternative leader to the Republican Party and that it's time to push Trump aside to embrace the future and to move on. Today's show was produced by Miles Bryan, who will lose our bet, and edited by Amina El-Sadi. It was fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Matthew Collette, and it was engineered by Paul Robert Mouncey. I'm Noelle King. It's Today Explained. Please. Wow. Please. Wow. Please.

Please.