The cowardice of Nikki Haley
On principles -- and politics
The following exchange happened on Tuesday between CNN’s Dana Bash and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley.
DANA BASH: How do you feel about your party's frontrunner being held liable for sexual abuse?
NIKKI HALEY: First of all, I haven't paid attention to his cases. And I’m not a lawyer. All I know is he's innocent until proven guilty. When he’s proven guilty and he’s sitting in a courtroom that is exactly what I am talking about. You have investigations on Trump and Biden.
Oh, that is rich.
“I haven’t paid attention to his cases”!!!
“I’m not a lawyer”!!!
Like, come on now. This is the same Nikki Haley that, roughly a week ago, spent two hours straight dropping opposition research hit after opposition research hit on Ron DeSantis during the duo’s Iowa debate.
That same person hasn’t spent any time familiarizing herself with the various legal entanglements of the guy who a) she is trying to beat and b) just won the Iowa caucuses by 30 points?
Since Haley isn’t familiar with Trump’s being held liable for sexual abuse, let’s remind her.
In 2019, E. Jean Carroll accused Trump of rape. She said the two had run into one another at an upscale department store in the 1990s. They vaguely knew one another — from running in similar celebrity circles.
They chatted and then, according to Carroll, the two went into a dressing room where the billionaire businessman sexually assaulted her.
Trump has long denied the allegations, insisting that he had never met her.
But, in May 2023, a jury found that Trump could be held liable for the sexual abuse of Carroll — although that same jury did not find that he had raped her. Here’s how the Associated Press reported on the verdict:
A jury found Donald Trump liable Tuesday for sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996, awarding her $5 million in a judgment that could haunt the former president as he campaigns to regain the White House.
The verdict was split: Jurors rejected Carroll’s claim that she was raped, finding Trump responsible for a lesser degree of sexual abuse. The judgment adds to Trump’s legal woes and offers vindication to Carroll, whose allegations had been mocked and dismissed by Trump for years….
….Jurors also found Trump liable for defaming Carroll over her allegations. Trump did not attend the civil trial and was absent when the verdict was read.
It was, um, pretty big national news. Sort of hard to miss. In fact, on the same day that Haley was telling Bash she didn’t know much about Trump’s legal problems, Trump was appearing in a New York federal court with Carroll as she seeks damages for claims that the former president defamed her.
(Trump spent much of the early part of the week reposting sexually suggestive past tweets by Carroll on his Truth Social site. So, yeah.)
The point here is that it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to believe that Haley doesn’t know about the E. Jean Carroll case. Or the other 17(!) women who have alleged that Trump engaged in sexual misconduct with them over the years.
She is way too smart a politician — and her campaign is way too savvy — to be in the dark about that. No, what Haley is doing is making a conscious choice: She isn’t going to engage on Trump’s conduct toward women. Period.
Why not? Two reasons, I think:
Haley would like to be Trump’s vice president. And while criticizing him for the “chaos” that follows him is the sort of criticism that Trump would probably shake off when making that decision, going after him as a sexual predator is not.
There’s very little evidence that the Republican base wants to hear any criticism of Trump — particularly on his personal conduct. The candidates who have tried to make an issue of his many legal entanglements for example (Chris Christie, Ada Hutchinson etc.) all are out of the race. And never had a chance of beating him.
Haley is playing it safe politically. Because she wants to preserve her future in a party that Trump dominates.
But, as I have said repeatedly in this space, that is not leadership. Sticking your head in the sand and saying that you don’t know enough about the allegations of sexual assault against Trump to offer a comment might allow you to survive this moment in politics. But it won’t distinguish you as someone who was willing to do what is right — no matter the political consequences.
Haley is far from alone in this. The difference in how Republican elected officials talk about Trump behind closed doors versus how they talk about him in public is massive.
Remember this tweet from just after the 2020 election by journalist Carl Bernstein:
I think that number might actually be low. But it speaks to the unwillingness of virtually any Republican leaders to let their true feelings about Trump (and what he is doing to the GOP) be heard.
Candidly, I expected more from Haley. She is someone who, going back to her first gubernatorial bid in South Carolina, stood up against the old boys network — running as a fresh-faced outsider willing to say and do things that were considered politically perilous.
But she, like (almost) everyone else in the Republican party, has cowered in the face of Trump. For political expediency. And at the cost of principle.
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well, I have others. --Groucho Marx
We live in interesting times.
I wish just one of these spineless GOP cowards would stand up and tell the truth. If only DeSantis or Haley would say, "If you vote for Trump, you're an idiot! But if you want to back a loser, that's your choice. We'll just have to live with another 4 years of Biden!"