I think Donald Trump wants Nikki Haley in the 2024 race. This week, Haley, a former South Carolina governor and Trump's former ambassador to the U.N., announced her intention to run with a formal announcement to come later.
This month. This despite previously pledging that she wouldn't do so if Trump were running again. President Trump has been withering about people who he endorsed or appointed becoming his opponents. Witness Ronda sanctimonious.
And yet, when it comes to Haley, he seems less concerned. Here's what he said on his campaign plane. Last weekend. Nikki Haley called me the other day to talk to me. I said, look, you know, go buy your heart if you want to run.
She's publicly saying, I would never run against my president. He was a great president. Go buy your heart. He said, I, for one, am not surprised. I don't think he sees her as a threat. In fact, her presence probably helps him in his mind. Haley has to contend with the fact.
That she may be up against her state's senator, Tim Scott. Should he get in? And that Trump's candidacy already has the support of two top South Carolina Republicans, its other Senator, Lindsey Graham, and Governor Henry McMaster.
Also, Trump has this bloc of voters who are seemingly locked in with him. No matter what. According to a recent Monmouth poll, 22% of Republican primary voters say they'll support Trump even if he runs as an independent. That might be a low number. It's an immovable number, it seems.
It suggests that it could be even higher. Plus, if 2024 is a rematch with Joe Biden. And Emerson poll recently found that 44% said they'd support Trump. 41% said Biden. But let's remember that if Haley barely registers in the polls thus far, it could all change on a dime.
Making predictions this early in a presidential race is often folly based on polling or even on the list of who has announced. Jeff Greenfield pointed all of this out in a recent Politico column titled A Warning to the Media.
About the Next Presidential Race. There are plenty of historical examples of frontrunners at this stage. Of the game who never got close. Among them, you'll remember in 2003, Vermont Governor Howard Dean was dominating the polls and had won the endorsement of both.
Al Gore and Bill Bradley, the prior contenders for the nomination. People were asking if the race was already over. And then came the Iowa caucuses, where Dean ran into ran a weak third to John Kerry and John Edwards,.
Who ended up being the president and VP nominees. Then four years later, the media was saying that the race was America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani. Against Hillary Clinton. That is, until primary voters weighed in and nominated John McCain.
And Barack Obama. Even as recently as this time in 2019. Joe Biden's candidacy was perceived by many as being dead on arrival. So all of this early polling is to be taken with a grain of salt. I get it. But for Trump to prevail as the nominee he needs to diminish the strength.
Of any single opponent like Ron DeSantis. And to accomplish that, he needs Nikki Haley in the race just like he needs Mike Pence and Sununu and Hogan and Christie and everybody else, as many people as he can fit on that stage to divvy up the pie, just like he did in 2016.
For Donald Trump in 20, 24. It's the more the merrier. Joining me now is David Byler, data analyst and political columnist for The Washington Post. His latest piece is this Trump's Republican opponents are making a painfully obvious.
Mistake. David, Donald Trump is under fire from a variety of investigations and much has been written about Republicans who want to move on from him. But in this piece, you point out that you think he's actually in a stronger position.
Than he was at this stage in 2016. How come? Well, part of it is exactly what you pointed out. It's that there is a chunk of the Republican establishment that is already endorsing him, that already likes him, that's already behind him.
And if you look at his polling numbers at this point in 2016 and the 2016 cycle compared to now, he has a higher favorability rating than he did back then. Over 70% of the Republican Party use him favorably. A lot of Republican voters.
Really liked how he governed as president and really have warm feelings towards him. So I think that you know he could lose he could go down in flames as many are predicting. But he also has a path to a majority. He doesn't have the same resistance of,.
Oh, he's just a reality TV star or oh, this is just a stunt. These last few years have transformed him into really the party's elder statesman, for better or worse. So let's put up on the screen where things stood in the 2016 cycle.
So it was literally it was February of 2015. He wasn't even registering. People like me were laughing at the prospect of him getting in the race, much less succeeding. Undecided. Was it 21%?.
The Bush reference there, of course, is Jeb. Fast forward now to where we are today for comparison. And all of a sudden you'll see that Donald Trump's at 46%, Ron DeSantis at 31. And I think to my point you know then you've got undecided at $0.08.
At six. Haley at three, Cruz at two, Rubio at two. Pompeo all those others beyond Trump and beyond DeSantis. They need to hope that either Trump fades because he's got issues, indictments, something else,.
Or that DeSantis has a glass jaw, right? Because if Trump remains where he is and DeSantis remains where he is, there's not enough oxygen left in the room. Right. Exactly. As you pointed out, it's still very early going.
But at this point, the dynamics of the race are very, very different. In that 2016 race, you had a fractured field now and you kept on having a fractured field. You kept on having sort of Trump skeptical Republicans flipping around. Do I like Ben Carson?.
Do I like John Kasich? Do I like Marco Rubio? Do I like Ted Cruz? Right now you have a two man race. You have Trump with his faction and you have the scientist sort of leading the pack of Trump alternatives and everybody else.
In that single digit range. So it's just a fundamentally different race at this moment. Okay. And that is the mistake that you think his would be opponents have not recognized. They don't get how the dynamics have shifted.
Just take 15 seconds on that. Yeah. I mean, there's two sides of the coin. Trump is no longer an insurgent candidate and his opposition is no longer so divided. That makes for a completely different primary.
David Byler, thank you so much for your experience and Expertize. We appreciate it. Thank you.
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