S4 Ep21: Nikki Haley’s (New) Time for Choosing (with Tim Alberta)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Focus Secret Podcast. Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark. And this week, we’re taking you to South Carolina. Now Donald Trump is heavily favored in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, and that’s a big problem for Nikki Haley because she was the governor there for six years. We asked South Carolina Republicans what thought of her tenure as governor and what they think of her presidential candidacy now.

Even though Nikkea is vowing to stay in the race until at least super Tuesday, Trump is about to win big in South Sarah Longwell, and all indications are that he’ll do the same on Super Tuesday and beyond. So to reflect on the state of party that’s about to re nominate Donald Trump. I’ve brought in one of the best writers out there about today’s GOP. Tim Alberta, staff writer at the Atlantic, and author of American carnage on the front lines of the Republican civil war and the rise of president Trump. He’s also got a new book out, the kingdom, the power, and the glory, American evangelicals in an age of extremism.

You should go buy both these books right now. They are awesome. Tim, thank you for being a three peat on the show. This is your third time here.

Thank you for having me for three times. Usually, I I don’t get invited back anywhere. So this is this is really

Well, you’re one of my favorite people to read, whether it is your books, your articles, but it is your article from, like, a long time ago, actually, that had you be the first person that popped to mind when we decided I was pushing, my team is, like, the Republican primary. Can we stop because everybody thinks it’s over. But look, I can’t help it. I root for Nikki, and you wrote the definitive piece on Nikki Ailey after January sixth. And because you had talked to her over multiple periods of time, allowed you to capture Nikki before January sixth, Nikki after January sixth.

Right? As you’ve watched Haley through this primary, since you got to know her so much through that profile, like, what do you make of how she’s doing? What do you think?

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. When you watch her in the last, let’s say, three or four weeks, Really, let’s be more blunt about it. When you watch her in this period during with it’s become clear to her along with everyone else that she’s not going to be the Republican nominee. It seems to have liberated her to actually say the things, do the things, be the candidate that she probably would have liked to be all along.

I think there’s a whole host of lessons in that and and maybe morals to take away from that reality. But, obviously, she spent the early stages of the race just doing everything possible to avoid criticizing Donald Trump you know, one of the really interesting things when Nikki started to deploy this line about Trump you know, chaos follows him wherever he goes, for better or worse, it just does. And we have to acknowledge that, I can remember periods where Nikki Haley really talked about Trump’s chaos as a strength that had made him unpredictable, that he kept world leaders on their toes, that that it was a negotiating advantage. And so it’s been interesting to sort of watch this journey that she’s been on, not simply vis a vis Trump, although I think, obviously, that’s that’s a big part of it, but My whole operating thesis when I wrote that piece about her a few years ago was having not only spent a considerable amount of time with her one on one, but also having talked to dozens and dozens of people who had known her over a period of, like, twenty or twenty five years and having really carefully sort of deconstructed her entire, political, and personal life, you got this sense that there was this sort of raging conflict, the inside of her, as far as, could she win being the kind of person the kind of politician, the kind of Republican in the age of Trump that she would like to be.

And I think she concluded before entering this presidential race, if the answer was no. And by the way, you know, lest anyone believe that I’m sort of criticizing her at tactical level for that. I think she probably was right in concluding that. In other words, had she come out and run a race that was explicitly anti trump and had sort of borrowed the style and the rhetoric from Chris Christie and had built her candidacy around that. I don’t think it would have worked.

I do think, however, knowing what we know now, if you gave her the option to go back in time and to run that race as a truly authentic version of herself. Because let’s be clear, we know how she feels about Donald Trump. I write about it extensively in that piece. You can go back and find the YouTube clips from twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen when she was stumping for Marco Rubio in South Carolina. I mean, She was very clear with people publicly, and she’s been very clear with people privately, and she was very clear with me how she feels about Donald Trump.

She talks about him as sort of a pitiful and at times loathsome figure. So it’s not like she’s left a lot to the imagination, But she clearly believed that at a strategic level, she had to conceal a lot of as she ran for president. And, obviously, she believed that gave her a better chance of winning. And now that she knows she doesn’t have a chance of winning, She’s just kinda letting it all fly. So good for her, and it’s refreshing, and it’s honest, at least.

But you do wonder if deep down, she wishes, that if she was going to lose anyway, that she would have just run that campaign, that she would have liked to run.

Yeah. I mean, I keep getting asked You know, what could she have done? And the answer really is nothing. Like, she could have attacked Donald Trump and gone the Chris Christie route, and She probably wouldn’t be the last person standing. Maybe she would have been out first.

Like, there was never enough of a lane for Nikki Haley. No matter what strategy she employed, these voters don’t want candidates like Nikki Haley anymore. They can smell the inauthenticity. Of her trying to walk the tight rope. And also, even when she was walking the tight rope, she still read to them as a rhino an old school establishment Republican, I just think the idea for Mike Pence and for Nikki Haley and for a bunch of these sort of Republicans from the before times, the idea that there is a world for them now, it’s not about strategy.

I it’s just that that world doesn’t exist. There’s not enough of the Republican party that wants candidates like them anymore. Do you think I’m off on that or what do you think?

No. No. I don’t. I think you’re exactly right. And, I was just texting with a friend of mine, another political reporter about this, and we were kinda going back and forth on this idea of beyond just running the yolo phase of her campaign now at this point, as I said, letting it fly and and not really caring I do think when she spoke the other day and said, look, I have nothing to lose.

I’m not looking for anything from Donald Trump. I don’t care, about whatever it is that he could offer me or whatever. I think that’s true. And I think that she recognized, you know, I don’t say this to be self serving at all, but I really, as soon as the piece ran that I wrote, I think two or three days later, there were reports that she tried to go to Mar a Lago to sue things over with Trump, and he said, you’re dead to me. And I think from that point on, it was pretty clear that is gonna be no repairing of that relationship.

And so now that she’s in this the yolo phase of her campaign kind of in the twilight stages here, There’s an open question, I think, of, well, is it just that she is now kind of letting it all hang out and saying what she believed all along as a matter of catharsis, or is she actually planting seeds for the post Trump era, is she trying to set the table here? Should he lose in November that she can come back And beginning, you know, in early twenty twenty five, say to other Republicans, look, I told you so. I told you that people didn’t want the chaos. I told you that he was too old that people were worn out and exhausted with him. And He lost to this feeble old man who shouldn’t have been able to beat anybody, and yet Donald Trump lost to him.

I think that there could be a degree of that at work, Sarah, I think that she is a a tactical thinker in that way. And so I think that there’s an element of that for sure. And yet, what that reality runs headlong into is what you just said that the future of the Republican Party would seem to look a lot more like JD Vance and Carrie Lake and Marjorie Taylor Green. The people who have unflinchingly and unwaveringly tied themselves to Trump. And even Viveck, right?

Like, in the focus group, we heard people making these fawning remarks about Vivek Ramaswami. And why? Mostly because he can’t be categorized as a rhino. He can’t be categorized as inauthentic. He can’t be categorized as one of these establishment Republicans, closet, liberal bought and paid for by the Democrats.

And the quickest way to earn that label is to criticize Trump in any way, shape, or form. I mean, I might be getting ahead of you here, and I apologize if so. But the single most fascinating point from that focus group, I should say, was the Mike Pence portion where every single one of the respondents registered a negative view of Mike Pence. And one of the guys even spoke up and said, he was disloyal to Trump. And you’re just like, well, hold on a second.

For four years, this guy did everything imaginable to subjugate himself to Trump and be as as loyal to him as anyone could possibly imagine, there is exactly one thing and one thing only that Pence did, that was disloyal to Trump, and that was putting the constitution ahead of Trump’s attempt to subvert it. And so It really does, to your point, it raises this question of can anyone who positions

themself as anything less

than a full throated unflinchingly subservient Trump acolyte survive in the party moving forward, at least at sort of the national stage. And All the evidence we have so far points to the answer being no. Alright.

Well, let’s jump into the focus group sound because it was an interesting group. I had twist some arms to do it. Because I knew, like, there’s a little bit sometimes where people are like, why? Why are we gonna pay for a group of two time trial voters in South Carolina who are gonna tell us exactly what we know they’re gonna say And I was like, because I don’t know. I wanna know.

I still wanna hear it. Like, she was their governor. I wanna know if they liked her when she was governor. And, like, why now there’s no interest in her? So I wanna start with some sound from the South Carolina voters about what they thought about the current Republican party.

And I think the things that they said were pretty indicative of why Trump continues to have such a commanding lead in this primary.

Well, I would say that I have been a strong Republican, but right here lately, the Republican Party seems to be filled with a bunch of what they call rhinos. They say they’re Republican, but they’re strictly against Republican beliefs, and they’re voting on the opposite side. Pretty much best line to know the opposite party. So I’m not sure if I’m a extreme Republican anymore. I’m just more for the best candidate, and he happens to be in the Republican party.

You know, you’ve got Trump and you’ve got everybody who hates Trump within the same party and is better than Trump, but I think they’re just more like your typical politician, whereas, like, self interest.

I think the Republican, party is pretty much a mess. Too many people vying for positions that they’re really not qualified for. And I think that just in my opinion, I think that probably even Trump coming out on top is gonna be dependent upon who it looks like his running mate’s gonna be.

Hence, wasn’t really like supportive of our president, whereas you see, like, Kamala, defend Joe to her death That’s why when we see it’s just, like, trump to, like, maybe not necessarily, like, share all of his opinions at certain things to try to bring more inclusion and just help everybody get along.

So there’s your pen’s clip. Look, I think it’s just a lot about the state of the primary that people just sort of volunteered that they were thinking about who Trump’s running mate was going to be because it means they’re already on to the general election. And this is the thing about focus groups where we ask people about Nikki Haley. People say things like, I don’t hate her or, I don’t know. She did some good things when she was at the UN, or she she seems tough or she seems respectable, but, like, nobody thinks she has a chance.

I saw Nikki in her speech, that she gave this week that I thought was quite good and sharp, where she’s talking about, like, the elites say that I don’t have a chance. They’ve counted me out. And I was like, Yeah. I know. But, like, the problem is all the voters count you out.

Like, they have not taken you seriously through this whole thing. God, I wish they would. If Nikki Haley beat Donald Trump, I keep people like yell at me sometimes sweater. They’re like, how could you say that you would support Nikki Haley? Are you kidding?

I would’ve supported Ron DeSantis over Donald Trump, and I hate Ron DeSantis, excuse my explicit editorial judgment there. But, like, I had no interest in a Rhonda Santis presidency, but If Nikki Haley was elected, that would show something going really right with this Republican Bardi that is currently not the case. They just never took her seriously. They never thought she was gonna know it. And so Did that strike you the fact that, like, she’s, like, not even on their radar, basically.

Yeah. And, you know, we shouldn’t be surprised by it. What’s interesting, I think, is that If you’d gone back, Sarah, a year ago and had convened a bunch of smart political reporters, political consultants, people who really know the game well from the inside, and you had said to them, hey, next, February heading into the South Carolina primary, we are going to have a mono e mono showdown. There’s gonna be two candidates left in the Republican primary can be Donald Trump versus Nikki Haley. But I think a lot of us would have been like, oh, wow.

This could be it. This could spell the end of Trump’s hold, the Republican Party because, you know, so much of the twenty sixteen primary was defined by the collective action problem of candidates not getting out of each other’s way, and nobody ever really got that clean one on one shot against Trump. Casik and Rubio and Cruise are all stealing boats from each other. Jeff hung in too long. And so the result of that was that Trump was able to win the primary by really carrying a whole bunch of states with, like, modest plurality votes.

What’s so fascinating is that now we have exactly the scenario that everyone sort of dreamed about back then And it doesn’t make a lick of difference. To your point, everybody just sort of yawns and says, okay. Well, like, wake me up when November’s here or you know, wake me up when he picks them, running me, but they’ve treated it as though there’s really not a race at all, which is sassinating at kind of a psychological level. Many people in that focus group were kind of registering various beefs, grievances, complaints, points of dissatisfaction with Trump. And then, like, as soon as they would say it, they would sort of immediately pivot to reassure.

Like, I’m gonna be voted for him. I I support him. I just wish that he wouldn’t do this or say this or whatever. So there’s this sense of inevitability, but even more than more than inevitably, like, there’s almost this sense of I don’t wanna be cute here when I say this, but, like, what came to mind when I was listening to it is, like, I wonder if this is how people in Russia feel out Putin. Like, he’s just there.

Whether you like it or not, he’s there. And there doesn’t seem to even be an element of the conversation in this circumstance around, well, what could we do about it? Like, in other words, there was a point in the focus group where they were asked, did you at any point hope for fresh blood in a Republican party? Right? And a bunch of people raised their hands.

Said, yeah. Like, you know, I was hoping for fresh blood. And then all of their subsequent responses were sort of predicated on the idea that it was always going to be Trump, and they really couldn’t do anything to change that. So there’s sort of a weird inherent contradiction.

Let me tell you what. There’s a lot of contradictions oftentimes in these groups, but that is an excellent point. One thing just to on your pence point, though, know, you’ve got JD Vance and Elise Stefanic, and these types now saying that they wouldn’t have certified the election. The way that Mike Pence did. These people who are vying to be VP, they know they better say that if they were in that position, they would stand by him.

And they that’s both from a voter standpoint because voters do think Pence betrayed him, but also from a Trump standpoint. Do you think loyalty is basically Trump’s only bar. Like, is the person who is the most obsequiously loyal to him, gets the job, or do you think he’s got other things he’s looking for?

I would say that it’s probably his highest priority. I don’t know that it’s his only priority. There are a lot of people around Trump in the, sort of think tank activist movement world who are jockeying to foist an agenda on him and to Yeah. Help him craft this vision that he can then adopt for governing. And I think to whatever degree some of those folks are successful in convincing Trump, not only to pursue that vision, but that that vision is going to make him transformative and leave him a legacy with the American people I do think that the specifics, the policy, thematics of that could factor into his choice there.

And, obviously, like when he chose Pence, you had people like Kelly and Conway among others who were really pressing the point that you don’t have any experience dealing with Congress. You need somebody who has that experience on Capitol Hill. That was a huge selling point in Saver of Mike Pence. So I think that there will be some similar pressure points here in this process, but let’s not kid ourselves, Sarah. The question of loyalty, fidelity, and utter subservience is, I think, the question for Trump.

He will never again tolerate the sort of dissension that he saw from the Mike Pence of the world and from, obviously, from some other folks in West Wing as well.

Well, the veep stakes are what is on these voters minds. I mean, many people brought it up that they’re interested in it. But I wanna get into Nikki Haley, specifically the duality of Nikki Haley. Right? So when you wrote that incredible profile of her in twenty twenty one, The headline was Nikki Haley’s time for choosing.

And I gotta say you really captured the way she’s behaved in her presidential campaign to a tee, right, the way her convictions, to the extent she has them, which I believe she does have some of them often run up against political expediency. This is exactly what you outlined before because as much as the consensus view of our focus groups is that she’s politician from before the Trump era, there are some voters who really value her competency and the tenacity because they did say like a few polite things about her. Let’s listen to those.

I know it’s not necessarily Sarah Longwell the room shared opinion, but but I actually like her. I think that she is a woman that can be respected that can earn people’s respect and carry people’s respect. I’ve seen her, be very calm and collected in situations that others would really just like act like Trump. And don’t get me wrong. I mean, I think that I want Trump as president.

But I think that she needs to have a good enough showing that he would consider her for his running mate.

What I’ve heard of her going forward and so far. She does seem like she’s a strong individual, willing to stand up and fight for what she believes in. But other than that, I don’t know a whole lot about her.

I think she did a good job bringing businesses here to especially like Greenville, Charleston. I think she did a good job with that.

So there were some, like, grudging things that they liked about her, but I will say the one woman who was gonna vote for her is actually a Trump backer who just wanted Nikki Haley to have a good enough showing so that you’d get considered for VP, which is, like, never a good thing when your only backer is, like, still prefers trial. So when you wrote your profile, you said Nikki Haley was an ambitious politician, but also, like, a very much a three-dimensional character. Right? You didn’t flatten her out. It was one of the things I loved about it.

So you wrote, for instance, about how taking down the Confederate flag from the state capital was such a personal fight for her Her big appeal to GOP lawmakers touched on racism and that she and her family experienced when she was a kid. According to your piece, She said that kind of pain shouldn’t be inflicted on a Bulwark child passing by the state house. You said this fight was why she was so deeply put off by Trump during the twenty sixteen primary. I was so excited for her to be president one day, and her taking down the confederate flag to me was one of these things. And at least if Hanuk used to be in this camp too, where I saw a future for the Republican Party that was leaving some of the baggage behind.

Right? There was gonna be this new generation, and then Trump was such a hard pivot away from that. But what do you think? Drive, sir? Cause I I think at her core, she’s a good person who imagines herself as a good politician that takes America in a good and decent direction.

And I think she’s been corrupted by all of the Trump stuff, but she still seems driven by something. And is it just raw ambition or, like, does she want to be president because she is like a positive thing she wants to do for the country. Like, what do you think drives her?

It’s a good question. She is a three-dimensional character. She is someone who has seen the worst of America and has seen the best of America. Which I think is what makes her compelling and what makes her really effective at times in her political life is that it’s not an abstraction for her when she talks about the pain of racial injustice. And she doesn’t have to give lip service to things just to check a box with certain demographics because she has actually lived some of that.

I mean, I remember going to Bamburg, South Carolina, her hometown and spending three or four days there and talking to people who knew her when she was a toddler and people who had known her parents since they moved there, and who could still remember her father wearing his turban around town. And the vicious remarks that would be hurled his way, there’s real scar tissue in her story. And it it almost seems like ancient history now, people forget the state lawmaker calling her a rag head when she was running for governor. Right? Like, there’s deep pain in her story.

And I think Her reaction to Donald Trump was in large part born out of that pain. It was almost this, like, visceral reaction where she was like, no. No. No. No.

No. No. No. I’ve dealt with people like you. I’ve been attacked by people like you.

I know a demagogue when I see one, and we as a country, we as a party, we cannot allow ourselves to be seduced by these appeals to nativism and hatred and bigotry and sort of pitting Americans against one another in this way. And that was, like, the most authentic version of Nikki Haley, I think that anyone had ever seen. I mean, I remember because she’s got a long list of enemies in South Carolina. And I remember talking with some people for that reporting I was doing where people who had never been allies of hers, people who never particularly liked her, people who had found themselves on the opposite end of major fights with her were, like, really kind of tipping the cap out of respect and saying, like, good for her because this can’t be good for long term prospects in the party going after Trump this way. Because keep in mind, when she was saying that stuff about Trump, this wasn’t like in the early stages of the primary where it was really safe.

This was much later. This was when it was pretty clear Trump was gonna be the nominee. And yet, she was still just emptying the bag on him, which, of course, raises an obvious parallel to what’s happening right now, which is that at this late stage in the race, when it’s clear that she’s not going to beat him. She’s just, once again, sort of, emptying the bag. And so what drives her to do that?

I do think that there is a fundamental sense of decency and a fundamental sense of civic duty You know, people might be surprised to, like, hear me say that. Like, aren’t you the guy who wrote that really negative peace sign? Well, actually, it wasn’t really a negative piece. It was a piece analyzing the trade offs and the compromises and the conflicts that every politician I take has to deal with at some level. And I think with Haley, because of her life story, but also because of her tremendous ambition, that conflict was more apparent and more sort of fantastic, sensational to witness than with your average politician.

And I think deep down, she really does have that moral compass and wants to appeal to the better angels of our nature and senses the need both as a Republican and as an American to try to pull us back from what is becoming a dangerous place. I do think that that as much as anything else is driving This decision late in the race to finally just sort of say what she’s thought all along.

Yeah. When I listened to these voters in South Carolina, I’m like, how did she get elected governor of this state? Like, it seems crazy to me now. That there was a time when she was able to sort of win people over. And one of the things that was interesting to me about this group was They didn’t have, like, a very strong impression of her time as governor.

I think there’s something that happened where so many of the voters who are now deeply engaged. They weren’t paying attention that closely before. They were polite about her time. You know, They were, like, mostly pretty unimpressed. Just just listen to what they said.

I’m having to go off my intuition because, you know, Nicki Haley, for one thing, I know how she did when she was in office before. I don’t truly believe what she stands for is what she stands for. Think there’s a puppet behind her. And she’s talks a good game, but then all of a sudden, you know, people like that, they pull out at the last minute or she don’t get her way or she see somebody else winning, and then she’ll go over to more of a democratic mindset or more liberal views if whatever place funds her.

I really didn’t care for her development. I don’t really see anything that she well, tourism, but other than that, like, I didn’t see anything that she did to advance our state, really. Librarian, so I’m an educator And I don’t really see anything that she, you know, did to help public education. And, you know, she made a whole lot of promises. And I know that the governor cannot do it, you know, all themselves, but I feel like when you make these promises, you should at least make an attempt to do what you say you were gonna do.

I can’t take you really one big thing that she did mean, there’s lots of people that be in office, and there’s nothing that you can actually say that they actually accomplished. I can say that the Nikki that I did, you know, when she was running them She has completely blocked. It’s almost like she bought off the dinner credit card to me. But one of the things that I just seen that she said just the other day on the TV that we’re asking her the retirement age, and she said that the retirement age needs to be raised because people are living longer. So pretty much she’s saying is you need to work into die.

And I’m like, oh, no. That was a automatic negative. If anything, the retirement should come down, I did have some respect for her when she did run previous She’s a little bit different now. It’s thought she’d bow up and she’d more democratic to me.

I apologize. I can’t remember the Republican candidate, Indian guy. Called her out and says she’s been bought by the Democrats. And I think somebody said that early on was like, you know, hey, they’re running on the Republican ticket, but they’re just That’s not their beliefs and their values.

It strikes me that simply by running against Donald Trump, I hear this in a lot of groups where people say about Nikki Haley. They’re just mad she’s running against him at all. They say this thing like she’s bought and paid for, and she’s a democrat. By the way, part of what is ironic and that is Republicans some of them, the old school ones talk about, like, what are we gonna do about social security? Right?

What are we gonna do to keep it solvent. And boy, is that not a popular position anymore doing anything about Medicaid or social security? And you can hear it in that voter. Right? There’s a lot of voters now like this where the old sort of Paul Ryan, the, hey, let’s be fiscally responsible.

Let’s get the debt down. That is not what animates them. In fact, it is a net negative. But, anyway, I wanna go back to your profile because when you wrote that, Like, we were years away from this, but it was still so prescient. Because you said it would come down to a choice between a path of least resistance where she appises, Fox prime time hosts and walks back her post January sixth criticism of Trump, or you say she could cast her lot with Liz Chidi and campaign this herself.

You had this sort of nailed. What do you think she’s chosen?

I guess the grand irony Sarah, as you said, the title of the piece was Nikki Haley’s time for choosing, and she didn’t choose.

Shoes. That’s the way I know.

Right? She tried to split the difference. Look, you can’t be everything to everyone in politics. You just you can’t. And, again, this isn’t to suggest that had she made the calculation to just go hard after Trump that it would have turned out any better for her, because I’m not sure that it would have, but it’s pretty clear that they wanted to try and have it both ways here.

And she is ultimately going to look back on this. I’m sure because I I’ve just gotten a pretty good sense of her and how how she thinks about these things, how she thinks about herself and her place in the party, and my sense is that she’ll probably come to regret the way that She ran the early stage of her campaign, but really also the way that she soft pedaled in the couple of years between January sixth and the launch of this campaign. I mean, again, I’m just struck by the number of times. I heard her going out of her way to kind of run cover for Trump when it wasn’t necessary. So many of these Republicans privately lament Trump’s death grip on the party and how it can’t be broken.

And yet publicly, they will run cover for him, and they will prop him up, and they will say things that clearly signal to voters that, yeah, he’s on your side. He’s you, don’t believe these media elites who are criticizing him. And so what that does is it deepens the well of support and it sort of further inoculates him from any future attacks. So I’ve gotta think that for some of those people on the focus group, just now, who are saying, like, I don’t know what happened to her, but she became bought and paid for. That language seems to be code for well, she used to say good things about Trump, but now she says bad things about So

That’s right.

Clearly, they got to her when actually the exact opposite is true. If anything, if you were going to look at Nikki Haley over the last five years and say that there was a stage at she was bought and paid for, it was being bought and paid for to say nice things about Trump. To cozy up to Trump, to ally herself with Trump and to excuse and justify and enable some of the things that he was saying and doing, that’s I think the great paradox here to unpack is how people perceive the politician like Lindsey Graham at another part in the focus group when somebody was bashing him saying, well, he used to say horrible things about Trump, and now he says nice things about Trump. So we just can’t trust him. That trust only runs one way.

Right? It’s kind of tragic at some level to see how voters have become desensitized to it all.

I’m so glad you brought this up because some of the most telling parts of the focus group when we asked about South Carolina to senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, I think their stories just say a lot about where the GOP is. So I wanna talk about them for a little bit. So, obviously, the spokes group wasn’t so hot on Nikki, but did he loved them some Tim Scott. And it’s clear why he’s been on, Trump’s VP shortlist lately. Let’s listen.

And he kinda goes against the grain a little bit, which I appreciate. But I think that’s a tremendous uphill battle. That’s why I think Trump could rescue, or just like feed, million orphans. Right? But someone would find something negative to say about because it’s because they don’t like trump.

But I think that’s the same way with Tim Scott, speaks up for what is right. He’s a South Carolina, and I love him.

He stands up for his right. I do believe he’ll call it out but he’s not as hot headed as this trump is. He’s got a way of, you know, handling things and and it’s, like, a calm way, but he still gets the point across I believe he’s a man of faith. And, I mean, he has some really good values about it. Like I said, he just is not as rubling of feathers as Trump.

I’ve never really heard anything about my tendency out myself, not in the state of South Carolina.

He was the one that I was considering that I have voted for had he, made his campaign a lot less. I kinda feel that his lack of national recognition had occurred in his attempt to run. I would see him as a strong candidate as a VP as well. I mean, he’s articulate. He’s he’s got a good sense of right and wrong.

So they loved him, Scott. He’s the best. I thought it was so interesting listening to how into him they were. So and I guess he and Nikki, like, they got into it in some of the early debates. Like, you know, when Nikki Yeali was doing, like, the passive voice chaos follows him, like, he was trying to do this, like, sunny, optimistic thing, like, why has he positioned himself so much better?

Why do they love Tim Scott and hate kee Haley. They weren’t running such different campaigns there for most of it.

Well, one big difference. Right? Even if it was passive, Nicki was still differentiating herself from Trump. She was still being critical of him to some degree, whereas Tim Scott, I mean, it was really almost comical at times, the way in which he would just he would avoid uttering a syllable that could be construed as even back handedly, mildly innocently, good naturedly critical of Trump, which is interesting because, you know, I profiled Tim Scott back in twenty eight eighteen, I think it was, or maybe it was twenty nineteen. But I did a a long profile on Tim Scott.

And Tim Scott had a couple of moments during Trump’s presidency where he thought about retiring from the senate and maybe going to seminary and pursuing preaching Not just because he was so worn out as a general matter, but because he was so worn out by the trumpism stuff and by the constant push and pull. I mean, I recount this episode where after Charlottesville, Tim Scott went into the Oval Office, and basically sat Trump down and wagged a finger in his face for the better part of an hour and gave him like a detailed history about racism in America and how the things that Trump had said in the wake of Charlottesville were morally unacceptable. So Scott is another person who, I think, has tried to have it both ways, but unlike Nikki, who, I think, came into this primary, not totally settled on which version of herself she was going to be. Tim Scott never had a doubt. He was coming in, and he was going to position himself as the happy warrior but only punching in one direction.

And it was not towards Trump. And whether that was just to position himself better to eventually be a a leading VP contender or whether he thought that that’s what the electorate wanted to hear, which if that’s really the case, then he needs better pollsters because The idea of sunny and optimistic and aspirational selling to this Republican primary base is as David Spade says in Tommy Boy, like trying to sell a catch up popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves.

Yeah.

You know, it just it was wasn’t gonna work.

Yeah. And as you just noted, Tim, South Carolina has another Republican senator who is also an sequious Trump Todey, Lindsey Graham, and let’s listen to what voters had to say about him.

I think he’s makes a good case of term limits.

I’ve been only in this state for a few years, and I hadn’t really seen anything. It’s just like he shows up on the TV and then he’s gone.

You know

what I mean? It’s what has he done? What does he do? I don’t know. So, yeah, I don’t know.

Well, I think that he is old, oh, one publican. I also think that he flip flops And that’s what I really don’t like about him. He, you know, bashed trump, smashed them. And then he jumped on his bandwagon wagon. Which one is it?

I don’t like that. If you don’t like him, you don’t like him, and stick to your guns. I don’t like the fact that he, you know, he’s done that more than once. And, that makes me feel like he’s not trustworthy.

Other than what everyone else said about being super, like, old school and dated, the only other thing that I really know is that his office was real responsive when we’ve had to, like, escalate stuff. He’ll stand up for the military stuff for if we need to get something done at the VA or we have issues. The office has been very responsive, and that’s the only dealings that I have. So I can be favorable about that.

Yeah. I don’t like Lindsay Graham at all. When I mentioned the word rhino, I see his face. Because, like she’d said, he’s a flip flop. You know, at one time, he couldn’t stand in smear campaigns, had nothing good to say about him, and then make and, you know, he had five truckloads of best things, sliced bread.

So he can’t be trusted. You really can’t trust politician anyway, because they’re gonna say whatever they need to say to win votes. The only person I’ve seen that doesn’t do that is trump. He’s truck. And what you see is what you get for him.

Trump is the only person who can be trusted. And I think you hit this before. I think that when the people who went from strongly anti trump to strongly pro trump, the way that grabbed it, I think they Tim Scott has avoided the fate of both Nikki and Graham because I don’t know whether people didn’t have, like, a big impression of him or he wasn’t as public or high profile at the time of speaking out about Trump, but they seem to have not clocked, like, that he was at one point a Trump critic and they formed their opinions of Tim Scott sort of in the post trump era. And we’re like, oh, yeah. I like this guy.

And They like that he is a suck up to Trump, but, like, for Graham, they really hit hard how against Trump he was, and they carry that with him. A lot of it is, like, yeah, I can’t trust him. And with Nikki, they say I can’t trust her.

I would even go a step further. And you heard it in the one woman’s response where she was talking about Graham flip flopping. And then she said, and he thought it more than once. So I think if there’s a single sort of wrote to Damascus’s transformation, Allah, J. D.

Vance, right, where he was just vigorously vociferously anti trump, and then he kind of goes quiet and claims to have seen the light and emerges on the other side a full blown trumper. Then I think that that is acceptable to a lot of these folks. I think it’s even appealing to a lot of these folks because they say, well, yeah. You know, good. This person finally came around, and I like a politician who can admit when they were wrong.

Right? But with Lindsey, it’s been the flip flop, flop, slip, flip flop, right, where all the way from the beginning stages of the twenty sixteen primary, where he’s saying what he’s saying about Trump being a demagogue and a racist and all this. All the way through January sixth where he goes to the senate floor and says, ah, I’m done. Right? But then a couple of months later, well, maybe he’s not done.

Right? Maybe he’s gonna jump back on the trump train. I think that’s the thing that’s unacceptable. And by the way, that’s the same thing that Nikki did. I mean, I think it’s been less cartoonish in Nikki’s case.

I think she’s at least had a little bit more polish and has sanded off some of the rough edges, but I think that she and Lindsey are kind of fundamentally guilty of the same sin in the eyes of voters, which is Trump, you have to be cold or hot. You can’t be lukewarm, and you can’t move back and forth. And both of them have done that. And what we’ve seen is in some other cases as well is that that just generally doesn’t Bulwark. That voters see through it, and they call you outsource.

This is such a great point. This is it. You’re right. Cause the voters went through this transformation too. Right?

They didn’t all love Trump at first. They saw the problems with it, but they all came around. And so they’ll forgive a politician for coming around. What they won’t forgive is the people who then fight trump at certain points I know you say Nikki was less cartoonish, but, like, one of the things that really I just remember turning my stomach was when she somebody asked her if she was gonna run for president. She was like, well, first, I’d have to sit down president Trump, and she basically said I’d ask his permission or his blessing.

And that comes up sometimes. From the groups, they’re like, she said she wouldn’t run against Trump, but now she is, and that’s why I don’t trust her. And part of the vacillating and the flip flopping that causes the distrust is a function of something deeper which is that these are people who what they’re doing is a constant positioning. Right? When Lindsey Graham says he’s out, he’s goes That was the right thing to do.

And then he found himself off sides of the party and had to quickly get back on, and people can sniff that out. Right? I wanna kinda hit you with this one thing before I ask you the last question, which is the idea that she didn’t choose is to me very potent. And, also, I think there’s this thing with a lot of politicians. Let me try to see if I can say this correctly, but, like, that we think, well, there’s a real version of them that doesn’t like Donald Trump and, like, the politician version of them that says what they need to say to get by.

When they criticize Trump, they’re being their authentic self and when they’re positioning or whatever, if that’s their politician self and we’re always trying to be like, well, which one is the real one exactly? The real one is the one that lives with that level of compromise. Like, to me, the true Nikki Haley or the true Lindsey Graham is a person who is willing to compromise at some of the deepest levels. I am always glad when Nikki Haley does the thing that I think is the right thing. And I was glad when Chris Christie does it, but I can never sort of let go of the fact that They clearly knew what the right thing to do was, then they’ve known sort of all along.

But they constantly when faced with a choice, They choose to compromise the thing that they believe. And it’s like, to me, that’s the character study. Not which way do they choose, but the fact that they They live kind of bobbing and weaving in the middle. Like, that’s who they are. And I find that in moments, like, the reason that people could say it’s a time for choosing.

Is that what they mean is it is a moment where you cannot do that, where that kind of vacillating is the thing that is wrong. Does that sound right? Am I getting it out correctly?

It doesn’t sound right. It sounds perfect. And I don’t even wanna step on the point you just made. I feel exactly the same way, and I don’t feel it because of any partisan or ideological skin in the game. It’s just as a matter of moral clarity, right is right, wrong is wrong, and especially in the moments where it matters most, you would hope that our leaders would speak to their true convictions and not have to as part of modulate and find this formulaic middle ground.

And, unfortunately, that’s too much to ask.

The moral triangulation. So as a closer. And on this point, do you think Vicky Haley’s gonna endorse Donald Trump? And before I let you answer that, I’m just gonna say, right now, we’re in this weird, Not exactly the Schrodinger’s cat situation, but, like, we’re in this situation where right now Nikki Haley is either doing an enormous good, or she’s doing an enormous amount of damage. And it’s not clear which, If she does endorse, then what she’s done is build a permission structure for people who have every concern that she shares about Donald Trump, including that he sides with dictators against America and that she then still says, and even knowing all that, I endorse them because the other side’s worse.

But if she continues this line of criticism and then refuses to endorse him, she holds to her guns and says, yes, but it’s too bad. I cannot vote for him under these circumstances. That she’s done an enormous amount of good. But everything that she is saying right now will ultimately judge by what she does to me, by whether she endorses him or not. And so do you think she will?

Gosh. I’m reminded of twenty sixteen when there was a a period of a couple of months middle to late spring into kind of early summer when you had a number of these folks, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz, some others who had either publicly or privately, in some cases, both, hinted very strongly that they were not going to support Donald Trump that they would not endorse him. And they said things that had seemingly locked them into that position, and yet they did wind up endorsing him. Not only did they wind up endorsing him. They wound supporting him through access Hollywood and everything else.

And the answers to the question of why, which I write about a lot in a couple of chapters of my book American carnage, kind of taking people through the process there, was that it came down to this very basic calculation or conclusion that these guys reached, which is that they were going to be damned if they do, damned if they didn’t. If Trump loses, then People would never forgive them for it. Other Republicans would point a finger at them and say, he lost because rhinos like you couldn’t set aside your hurt feelings and your ego and just line up and support him and do what was right for the party. And therefore, you’re done. And so if you’re Ted Cruz and you wanted to be president one day, if you’re Paul Ryan and you wanted to rewrite the tax code and be a player moving forward, you know, I don’t need to go down the list.

Kevin McCarthy, all these other guys. Right? They all made fundamentally the same decision. So has the world changed enough for Nikki Haley to not fall into that trap? I don’t know.

But I do know that she really wants to be president of the United States. And if she gets to a place where She is convinced that there’s no way that’s ever gonna happen unless she supports Trump now. By now, I mean, sometime between now and, you know, October, then she probably will. And by the way, Sarah, we have lost the ability to be surprised. Like, all it’s gonna take, right, is for At some point this summer, something blows up in the Middle East or in the South China seas or whatever, and that Haley has to cover politically to come out and say, okay.

For everything I’ve said and disagreed with Donald, I at least know that Donald is gonna protect American interests and that Joe Biden is not up for this job. And so I’m proud to vote for Donald Trump because we can’t forward to take a risk of four more years of Joe Biden. Right? Whatever it is. Like, you can see a scenario in which that happens.

It’s not far fetched. Do I like you hold out hope that she might actually stick to her guns? Sure. Because if for no other reason, then it’s like, a win for honesty and authenticity and politics, but I’m not necessarily holding my breath.

Yeah. I mean, I get made on us for giving her even, like, a thirty five percent chance of not endorsing him by some of my colleagues, basically as Tim and JBL. I don’t know. I am, like, Lucy with the foot all on people’s fundamental decency sometimes winning out. I don’t know.

I can’t give it up. Anyway, Tim Oberta, thank you so much for coming back to talk about this. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group podcast. We’ll be back next week with a change of pace. A big Democratic primary in California for us to talk about.

See you then.