Nikki Haley, former President Donald Trump’s chief rival in the Republican primaries, called for the party to unite behind him at the Republican National Convention Tuesday evening. “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period,” the former South Carolina governor declared to a roaring crowd. Haley addressed her speech to Trump skeptics in the party, saying, “You don’t have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him” and argued that a unified GOP was required for “saving” the nation.
Haley’s plea to her supporters to fall in line behind Trump was more forceful and comprehensive than her soft endorsement of Trump in May. It marks the official end of her dalliance with pseudo-independence from the MAGA wing of the party. And her decision to do it without winning any concessions from Trump illustrates how much power he has, and how little leverage she has in trying to preserve some remnants of the old GOP.
Haley offered Trump an endorsement that was not only full-throated, but even helped revise his record.
Haley ended her presidential bid after losing to Trump in all but two small GOP primaries. She suffered a blowout loss on Super Tuesday. She argued then that Trump had work to do after a primary season to win over the roughly 15% of the Republican electorate who preferred her to him. “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that,” she said when she ended her campaign in March. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people.”
While Haley espouses or accommodates many MAGA values, she still waged war against Trump during the primaries by attacking his character and calling him unfit for office. She described him as “totally unhinged” and pushed back against his thirst for “revenge.” She warned that he is “declining” cognitively and called him a “toxic” agent of “chaos” who lacks “moral clarity.” And she diverged from a key pillar of the MAGA worldview by stating that America doesn’t “rig elections” and acknowledged that Biden won the 2020 election.
Trump has, unsurprisingly, not heeded Haley’s calls for civility, nor has he tempered his rhetoric on revenge or rigged elections. He remains wedded to a divisive and combative rhetorical style in which he signals authoritarian ambition. He has continued to reject the results of the 2020 election and, after being convicted of 34 felony counts, he has impugned the legitimacy of the legal system.
Nonetheless, Haley offered Trump an endorsement that was not only full-throated, but even helped revise his record and boosted him in an area where she has had sharp policy differences from him in the past: foreign policy. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration, Haley diverged from Trump by staking out more hawkish positions on Russia than he did, including by making clear her belief that Russia meddled in the 2016 elections. During the primaries, Haley denounced Trump for encouraging Russia to attack NATO allies. But in her RNC speech, Haley praised Trump as a guarantor of a “strong America” and blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on President Joe Biden — you know, the guy who is a NATO traditionalist and helped organize an unprecedented sanctions regime against Putin.
Toward the end of her speech, Haley spoke about the importance of making the Republican Party bigger and more appealing to the general public. But she’s too smart and savvy of a politician to delude herself into thinking Trump has or ever will have an interest in changing his worldview to do so. Haley is a creature of the party, she has significant political talent, and she wants to remain a player. It would be surprising if she didn’t have her eye on 2028. Her conspicuous bending of the knee to Trump is the simplest way to ensure she has a chance to stay in the game.