Haley cuts ties with Trump: ‘We shouldn’t have followed him’

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley said in an interview with the news website Politico.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley ended her formerly warm relationship with Donald Trump, saying in an interview over the weekend that it was a mistake to have followed him.

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley said in an interview with the news website Politico. “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.”

Haley told Politico she hasn’t spoken to Trump since the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection when hundreds of Trump’s followers stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to prevent the Senate from certifying Biden’s election victory and called for the hanging of then Vice President Mike Pence.

The former governor of South Carolina and expected presidential candidate in 2024 said she was furious with Trump for failing to support the vice president.

“When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” Haley told Politico. “Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He’s been nothing but a good friend of that man. … I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”

Since leaving her position as UN ambassador in 2018, Haley had cautiously backed Trump, tiptoeing around the former president’s tendency to make incendiary statements until the events on Jan. 6, when she said Trump “was badly wrong with his words” and that “his actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.”

Haley’s break with Trump may position to earn wider Jewish support for a 2024 presidential run, says veteran reporter Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Her solidly pro-Israel stance makes her one of the favorite speakers at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, and her proven track record in promoting equal rights and removing symbols of the Confederate south may gain her support among traditionally Democratic Jewish voters.

“Many GOP Jews will be happy with Haley’s decision [on Trump] and could help her with her presidential ambitions,” Kampeas said. “She has a very warm relationship with Jewish Republican groups, including the Republican Jewish Coalition (at an RJC event last July, Haley urged Jewish voters to ignore Trump’s coarse conduct and focus on the ‘results’ his policies have yielded).”

“I would certainly hope under any circumstance that our community shows their appreciation, in any endeavor that she undertakes,” Houston businessman Fred Zeidman, a major Republican pro-Israel donor, told the JTA.

The Times of India notes that the 2024 presidential election might pit two women with Indian-ethnic backgrounds as the frontrunners.

“In the long run, there is also the remarkable prospect of two Indian-American women – Kamala Harris and Nikki Haley – vying for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party respectively,” the paper noted.

Donald TrumpNikki HaleyRepublicans