The Republican primary contest has narrowed to a two-way battle between former President Donald Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and neither is afraid to stick their hands in the mud to launch at their rival over everything from petty nicknames to insulting family members.
Trump is significantly ahead of Haley in the presidential primary, having earned 63 delegates to Haley’s 17. However, Haley is not backing down despite a third-place finish in Iowa and a severe blow in Nevada after she lost to “none of these candidates.” If anything, her losses have fueled her fight against Trump even more.
Though the former president is known as the most frequent mudslinger, Haley has stepped up in some instances to blast Trump on his age and approach to foreign and domestic policy.
Trump has ramped up his attacks on the former South Carolina governor in recent weeks, taking aim at her deployed husband and her name and drawing both praise from supporters and severe criticism from critics and Democrats saying the actions shine a spotlight on Trump’s character.
Haley’s birth name source of mockery
Ahead of the Iowa caucuses, Trump took an extreme approach to mudslinging and mocked Haley’s birth name, citizenship, and marriage, one of the first signals as to how nasty the 2024 Republican primary is going to get.
He stoked incorrect speculation that because her parents were not U.S. citizens in 1972, when Haley was born, she cannot be president. Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, was born in South Carolina as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always gone by her middle name, “Nikki,” and took the surname “Haley” when she got married in 1996.
After the caucuses, Trump called Haley “Nimbra” in his social media posts and claimed she didn’t have the stamina to be president.
Trump also spread rumors about her cheating on her husband that first surfaced during her gubernatorial campaign for South Carolina in 2010. The accusations have been roundly rejected by Haley and have not been proven.
‘Birdbrain’ cage
Once Haley started making headway in polls and closing the gap between Trump’s lead and his opponents, the former president shifted his attacks to Haley instead of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
Last year, Trump began calling her “Birdbrain.”
“Birdbrain doesn’t have the TALENT or TEMPERAMENT to do the job. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
A few days later, Haley shared a photo of a bird cage and a bag of bird feed left outside her hotel in Des Moines, Iowa, from the “Trump Campaign.” She called the incident “pathetic” and proved he was threatened by her presidential bid.
Haley hands out cognitive tests in critique of Biden and Trump’s age
Age has been a dominant issue in the 2024 election, as Biden is the oldest president in United States history at age 81. Trump is 77 years old, and Haley is capitalizing on that more aggressively as the GOP primary continues.
During a rally in South Carolina on Saturday, she handed out mental competency tests mocking Trump and President Joe Biden. The test included questions such as identifying animals and drawing a clock.
Haley has not taken the test but said she would be “happy” to.
“I don’t care if people take it 50 up. I’ll tell you, these are basic things,” Haley said at the rally, according to NewsNation. “Congress is the most privileged nursing home in the country. The party that dismisses their 80-year-old candidates is the party that will win president, without a doubt.”
She proposed a mental competency test for politicians over the age of 75 nearly one year ago, adding to her calls for a new generation of leadership with the Republican Party.
A mobile billboard, part of the Haley campaign’s “Grumpy Old Men” series, also paraded around the South Carolina area and parked outside Trump’s rally. It showed videos of both Trump and Biden getting confused during speeches and mumbling during public remarks.
Trump has hit back at Haley for going after his age, stating ahead of the New Hampshire primary that he would score higher on a cognitive test than her.
Trump knocks Haley’s military husband’s disappearance
Trump hit back at Haley during his rally on Saturday, mockingly asking why Haley’s husband has been absent while she campaigns.
“Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away. He’s away!” Trump said of him. “What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.”
Her husband, Michael, was deployed in June 2023 to Africa for a year with the South Carolina Army National Guard. Haley called Trump’s comments “insulting to military families” on Sunday.
“It’s just — it’s insulting to military members. It’s insulting to military families,” Haley said. “And the part that bothers me is that he continues to do this. This isn’t personal about me and Michael; this is about what it says to every member who sacrifices for us. This is about what it says to every military family who sacrifices alongside of them.”
Haley: Trump makes Biden ‘sound sane’
In an appearance on Fox News on Monday, Haley said Trump’s recent remarks in South Carolina make Biden sound “sane.”
Trump made comments about protecting NATO members who insufficiently contribute to the military alliance. He said he was asked by an anonymous president from a NATO country whether the U.S. would protect the nation if Russia attacked.
“I said, ‘You didn’t pay, you’re delinquent?'” the former president told the crowd on Saturday. “In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.”
Haley said those comments came out because he “went off script” and “off the teleprompter.”
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“That’s what you’re gonna get is unhinged chaos,” Haley said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. “And that only makes Joe Biden sound … sane.”
“When you get Donald Trump making Joe Biden sound sane, it’s more of the reason why Donald Trump can’t defeat Joe Biden,” she added. “They’re taking everything he’s saying, and they’re gonna use it against him.”
