Nikki Haley

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley effectively launched her 2024 presidential campaign during her Monday night speech at the Republican National Convention to much media fanfare. Less noticed was an equally qualified and camera-ready Republican woman that is arguably much better positioned to carry the party torch post-Trump: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. The media was split on reactions to Haley's audition: some mocked her declaration that America isn't a racist country, but others applauded her as the GOP's own 'return to normalcy' and 'compassionate' candidate. Voters who support the Trump agenda ought to be wary of this praise.

Here’s a question no one will ask. How is it possible the Republicans — the party universally deplored and maligned by Hollywood, Big Tech, and all of mainstream media — consistently manage to pull off far better production quality in broadcast content than the Democrats?This was fully evident Monday on night one of the Republican National Convention where the GOP delivered a sleek, well-produced, visually and audibly impressive presentation to American voters. Stack that next to what we saw from the Democrats last week, who have virtually every millionaire and billionaire in Hollywood and Silicon Valley on their ideological side — yet apparently, that support doesn’t extend to basic production, styling, or home office assistance.

The White House has announced that everyone coming into range of President Trump will be tested for COVID-19. Trump, meanwhile, insists that he won’t wear a mask when meeting other leaders — or, as he put it in order of reverse dignity, ‘presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens’.Unfortunately the worst-case scenario — that a 73-year-old might catch a dose and get seriously ill — no longer seems outlandish. On Sunday night, Britain’s prime minister Boris Johnson was hospitalized after falling sick 10 days ago. Today he went into critical care. What if someone sneezes and Trump catches a cold?Welcome to the nasty, brutish and short Pence presidency.

The battle for the soul of the Republican party after President Trump has begun. Last week former United States ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, gave a provocative speech to the Hudson Institute setting herself up for a 2024 run on a largely free market platform. The speech has been published by Stand for America, an advocacy organization founded by Haley after standing down as ambassador in December 2018. Haley argues that capitalism has lifted billions out of poverty, improved the environment, and created immense prosperity – including the electricity, cars, airplanes, the internet and much more.

Nikki Haley, the first female governor of South Carolina, has a book out this week. Titled With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace, Haley has been making the rounds to promote it and has managed the rarest balancing act of the Trump era: criticizing him when necessary but not going into full-on Trump Derangement Syndrome.Haley appeared on NBC News with Savannah Guthrie this week and the clip went viral because of how hard Guthrie went after Haley. Liberals on Twitter applauded but the clip also made the rounds of my non-political Facebook universe commending Haley for her calm demeanor and grace under pressure. Guthrie focused most of her questions not on Haley’s book but on Haley’s opinion of Donald Trump and Haley swatted them easily.

Will President Trump switch up his ticket in 2020? The Wall Street Journal editorial page, bastion of the establishment right, certainly hopes so. A little over a week ago, it called for former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to replace the dutiful Mike Pence as vice president. But there’s well-placed chatter in Washington that suggests the president will take a different route. Trump does indeed feel he needs VP change, but it is not Nikki Haley he is considering. It is Fox News host Tucker Carlson.The Trump 2020 campaign needs panache, not more cash. If Trump wants to make a switch – as both his predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, flirted with doing – why would he lean further into the establishment?

At this point, we can relegate the admonitions and advisories to the small print reserved for the disclaimers about possible side effects on bottles of medicine and past-performance-is-no-guarantee-of-returns notices on mutual-fund prospectuses. Sure, it is possible that Donald Trump will lose the presidential election in 2020. It is also possible that he will choose not to run. Many things are possible. But as I have explained in these virtual pages — taking care to post those cautionary bulletins — it is likely that Donald Trump will run again for the presidency in 2020 and it is very likely that he will win and win by a much larger margin than his victory in 2016. I set forth my thoughts on the subject at the end of March.

For all the encomiums she delivered to Trump and his coterie today, Nikki Haley delivered an unexpected blow to the Trump White House by announcing her resignation. Her announcement caught Trump flatfooted, coming after the previous evening’s revelries at the White House, where he turned a ceremony for newly minted Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh into a political pep rally that is likely to further enrage his detractors and opponents. The sudden defection of one of his big stars is exactly the kind of television programming that Trump loathes, particularly on the eve of the November midterm elections, which Politico says look increasingly ominous for Republican control of the House of Representatives.