Donald Trump is “unhinged” and “diminished”, said Nikki Haley, the former president’s last rival for the Republican presidential nomination, on Wednesday.
“To mock my husband, Michael and I can handle that,” the former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador told NBC News’s Today, referring to comments by Trump about Michael Haley, a national guard officer deployed in Djibouti.
“But you mock one member of the military, you mock all members of the military … Before, when he did it, it was during the 2016 election, and everybody thought, ‘Oh, did he have a slip? What did that mean?’ The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016. He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.”
In the 2016 campaign, Trump mocked John McCain, an Arizona senator and former nominee for president who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Having avoided the draft for that war, Trump was expected to pay a heavy political price but did not, going on to attract controversy in office for allegedly deriding those who serve.
Eight years later, Trump has won Republican votes in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and leads Haley in her own state, the next to vote, by vast margins.
Haley’s use of the word “diminished” spoke to concerns about Trump’s age – 77 – but also that of the president, Joe Biden, who at 81 is facing a barrage of Republican attacks about his fitness for office. Haley, 52, has said older politicians should face cognitive tests.
Initially shy of attacking Trump, Haley has turned fire his way as primary rivals have dropped out, leaving her the last impediment to a third Trump nomination. But Haley continues to say she will support Trump if he is nominated to take on Biden.
“I have said any of those 14 [Republican candidates] would be better than Joe Biden,” she told NBC, “because everybody sees how diminished Joe Biden is.
“[But] I will also tell you there is no way that the American people are going to vote for a convicted criminal. They’re not.”
Trump faces 91 criminal charges under four indictments: 40 for retaining classified information, 34 for hush-money payments to an adult film actor, 13 for attempted election subversion in Georgia and four for attempted federal election subversion.
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The former president also faces civil suits over his business affairs and was on the receiving end of an $83.3m judgment in a defamation case arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.
After supreme court arguments last week, Trump looks set to survive state attempts to remove him from the ballot for inciting an insurrection, the attack on Congress of 6 January 2021.
Despite such dramas, Trump is poised to extend control over his party by installing a loyalist and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as Republican National Committee co-chairs and a campaign official, Chris LaCivita, as chief operating officer.
Asked about Trump’s claim she was hurting the party by staying in the primary, Haley told NBC: “From a man who spent $50m of his own campaign contributions on his personal court cases, where the RNC is broke, I’m the one hurting in resources? I don’t think so.
“I’m the one that saves the Republican party. Look at every general election poll. Look at any of them. Trump loses [to Biden] by five, by seven. On a good day, he’s even. Margin of error. I defeat Biden by up to 17 points.”
