She is questioning his mental fitness and he is getting her name wrong deliberately. Any hope of peace, love and understanding breaking out in New Hampshire ahead of tomorrow’s Republican primary vanished over the weekend as Nikki Haley and Donald Trump traded blows.
He started it, she said, by getting her mixed up with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Speaking at a rally, former president Trump did indeed refer several times to Haley in connection with the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
“Nikki Haley is in charge of security,” he told supporters. “We offered her 10,000 people, soldiers, national guards, whatever they want. They turned it down.”
Haley, who has called before for politicians in senior positions to have competency tests, seized on the mix-up. “I’m not saying anything derogatory, but when you’re dealing with the pressures of a presidency, we can’t have someone else that we question whether they’re mentally fit to do it.”
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She later added: “We need people at the top of their game. I’m not saying that this is a Joe Biden situation, but are we really going to have two eighty-year-olds running for president?”
Trump said his mind was stronger now, at 77, than it was 25 years ago. He also referred to his opponent as Nikki “Nimrada” Haley instead of Nimarata, saying she made a “wacked out” speech.
While this is mere playground shenanigans compared to previous Trump attacks, you might wonder why he is saying anything about Haley. After all, she finished a distant third in Iowa, which he won with 51% of the vote.
It is a resounding victory by any measure, but in Trump’s head that means 49% did not vote for him. He is still smarting from the former US ambassador to the UN saying she would never run against him, only to have a change of heart.
Until this weekend she had steered clear of openly going for Trump. Like every other contender for the nomination she did not want to rile the MAGA faithful. So what has changed from Iowa?
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The voters, for a start. Independents as well as registered Republicans can vote in New Hampshire. Electoral folklore has it that this makes the poll more like a general election. A win here shows a candidate can appeal to the centre ground - a vital factor for donors.
For Haley, it is a case of New Hampshire or bust. If she cannot bump DeSantis into third, and start to close the gap with Trump, the race, for her, is over. That leaves Trump with just DeSantis to deal with, and that will not take long.
Securing a clear path to the nomination this early would be a blessing for Trump. In Iowa last week he had to leave the state on polling day to attend court in New York. It was a glimpse of long days to come as he tries to combine running for office with staying out of jail. Facing multiple charges in a variety of courts, his diary could do with some blank spaces.
There’s the money factor too. Donations continue to roll in, but laying out less on securing the nomination means more money to spend on his ever-expanding army of lawyers. Any day now he will find out the size of the fraud fine he has to pay in New York.
As of Saturday, polling aggregators FiveThirtyEight has Trump on 48.9% in New Hampshire, Haley on 34.2%, and DeSantis nowhere on 5.2%. That is a lot of ground for Haley to make up. It would be tough even for a top flight candidate, and Haley is far from being that.
She has made some glaring errors, including failing to list slavery as a factor in the Civil War. She has lost her temper during debates, calling a rival “scum” for mentioning her daughter. Not taking questions at events has not gone down well either, with voters and the media.
In another insult, Trump suggested she would not make the cut to be his vice-president, claiming she would not stand up to Putin. Haley insists she doesn’t want to be anyone’s Veep.
In any other year, any other presidential race, Haley would have struggled to get into the contest never mind win. It is a measure of how desperate the electorate is to avoid a Biden-Trump rematch that Haley has made it this far.
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Yet if by some chance she was to secure the nomination, Haley would do best against Biden, according to a recent survey. A YouGov survey for CBS News has her polling 53% compared to 45% for Biden (Trump was 50% to Biden’s 48%, DeSantis 51% to Biden’s 48%). Her attacks on Biden’s age and competency have paid off, feeding as they do on existing worries about a second term for the 81-year-old.
In public at least, the Democrats fear no-one. In private, and among those voters who are bothering about politics at all this far out from the election, there are vague hopes that something will turn up and a Biden-Trump contest will be avoided.
Yet time is racing on and the options before the parties seem to diminish by the day. Biden’s likely replacement, vice-president Kamala Harris, polls as badly as he does on the key issue of immigration. Trump’s nomination increasingly looks a formality, the convention a coronation.
There is no-one out there riding to the rescue, despite the wilder speculation doing the rounds. Sheryl Sandberg’s recent decision to leave Meta’s board sent the usual hares running about what she could do for the Democrats, but for now that looks the stuff of fantasy politics. Any new rival to Trump would run up against the same problem of his base. Any of the possible independents would take votes from the Democrats.
Americans might despair at the prospect of a Trump-Biden rematch, but barring some miracle in New Hampshire, that is the reality they face. “Everyone’s looking at New Hampshire,” said an optimistic Haley. She is right about that at least.
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