Nikki Haley on Friday accused former President Donald Trump of trying to “bully” his way to winning the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
Mr. Trump has warned potential donors to Ms. Haley’s campaign that they would be excommunicated from the Make America Great Again movement, and his allies in the Republican National Committee were hashing out a resolution — which they have since backed off — deeming him the party’s presumptive nominee.
“Think about that. That is a president who is supposed to serve every president in America and you’re deciding you are going to have a club and actually ban people from being in and out of your club?” Ms. Haley said on Fox News of Mr. Trump’s donor threat.
Ms. Haley also said Mr. Trump had a hand in the effort to pressure RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and his fingerprints were all over the pro-Trunp resolution that members were preparing to offer at the group’s winter meeting.
“I know how much he has pushed on Ronna,” Ms. Haley said. “Ronna has made that very clear that he was pushing to stop debates all this time.”
“So he pushes them to do things, and I think they got some major blowback and that is why he had to walk it back,” she said. “Look, you can’t bully your way through this process.”
Ms. Haley is facing an uphill battle in her bid to upset Mr. Trump in the GOP presidential race.
Mr. Trump carried the Iowa caucuses by a record-setting margin and won the New Hampshire primary by double-digits, making him the first Republican to pull off the feat since President Gerald Ford in 1976.
Mr. Trump has criticized Ms. Haley’s decision to stay in the race, and this week said that donors who open their wallets to her campaign will be blackballed.
Ms. McDaniel, meanwhile, said Ms. Haley no longer has a viable path to the nomination and the party should unite behind Mr. Trump.
Plus, an effort was underway in the RNC to declare Mr. Trump the presumptive nominee.
Mr. Trump, in a social media post, said that “for the sake of PARTY UNITY” the RNC should not pass such a resolution. He said he wanted to win the race the “Old Fashioned” way.
Ms. Haley and her allies are standing their ground.
The pro-Haley super PAC SFA Fund announced it pulled in $50.1 million over the second half of 2023, besting the $46 million that the pro-Trump MAGA super PAC raked in over that same period.
It was unclear, though, how much money the Haley group blew through, and the money flowed in before she failed to slow Mr. Trump’s momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Ms. Haley said her official campaign raised $1.6 million after Mr. Trump cautioned donors to stay away.
Ms. Haley is focused on the Feb 24. primary in her home state of South Carolina.
She is warning voters Mr. Trump is an inherently flawed general election candidate because he turns off the independent and moderate voters who have flocked to her campaign.
“I win moderates and I win independents, which he does not,” she said.
Ms. Haley said that is why he lost the White House in 2020, and why Republicans struggled in the 2018 and 2020 elections.
“You can’t win a presidential election without moderates and independents,” she said. “I will do that.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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