If only Nikki had looked like that when she sat with Trump

First, I offer my apologies to you, dear readers, for not posting for 10 days. I’ve been busy. And of course, once I go several days, I feel like I need to post something big, and I don’t have time for big, and more time passes. Stupid, really. There’s no reason I can’t post small things, so I’ll try to do that.

One thing I’ve not written about is our Nikki’s decision to blithely seek yet another job for which she is not qualified. Here’s what I had to say about that on Twitter:


I just haven’t wanted to get into it, because its just all so absurd. I’d rather talk about the death of Raquel Welch or something. But I’ll share with you an email exchange I had yesterday, and we can use that to get into this, if y’all are interested.

I got this from Andrew Kaczynski with CNN, headlined “CNN question on 2010 blog post:”

Brad,

Hope you are doing well. I’m reaching out for background research purposes on this old blog post on Nikki Haley’s interview with the Palmetto Patriots.

Trying to get a list of interviewers. WSJ identified Robert Slimp as one interviewer. And I saw you screenshot the website at the time. Wondering if you remember anything else about the members.

 

Andrew Kaczynski

So that caused me to dig a bit, and I responded:

So those guys disappeared, huh?
No, I don’t remember much about them. Guys like that are always skulking about, and my only interest in them has been when we see Republican candidates going to genuflect before them.
This might help, though…
You seem to be looking at an old version of the blog. Here’s the same page on the current version.
There are still dead-ends from that, but I poked around a bit and found this post from 2017, in which I presented video of Henry McMaster appearing before the same group. That video was still active, and it took me to the group’s YouTube page, which is still up and running.
And there I found a video of Nikki appearing before them. And lest it disappear, I downloaded it. You might want to do the same.
I watched a little of it, and was reminded of how odd it was 13 years ago.
Look at her. She appears to be a prisoner, doing her best to appear cooperative — I assume someone told her she HAD to do this, and she was toughing it out. The usual smile, the easy charm, are missing. But it doesn’t matter whether she WANTED to do this or not, does it? The fact is, she did it. She gave them the answers they wanted. She saw it as the price of admission, and she paid it.
And no one should forget that.

Kaczynski said that the one guy he had a name for (gleaned from an old story co-written by our own Valerie Bauerlein), Robert Slimp, died in 2021. I found the obit, and it’s interesting. Here was a guy whom Republican candidates in South Carolina regarded as a gatekeeper of South Carolina’s precious “heritage,” and yet he was not from South Carolina, and none of his named survivors lived here. Still, Republicans believed they must abase themselves before his group if they wanted to win a GOP primary in seeking high office.

And seriously, look at Nikki’s face in that video. She looks scared to me, or at least very unhappy. Sort of like a prisoner about to give a confession under intense interrogation. As I said to Kaczynski, the fact that she was unhappy doing it doesn’t excuse her. She still did it, and that’s unforgivable.

But here’s something else that worries me, and should worry everyone. When she was sitting next to Donald Trump demonstrating her bona fides to MAGA extremists, she didn’t look like that. She was smiling.

And that is truly creepy…

If only she’d looked like that when she appeared with Trump.

8 thoughts on “If only Nikki had looked like that when she sat with Trump”

  2. Brad Warthen Post author

    Andrew Kaczynski says the CNN story will appear today. If I see it first, I’ll link you to it. If you see if first, please let me know. He says they did manage to find some of the info he was seeking when he came to me…

  3. Brad Warthen Post author

    By the way, in case you’re wondering why Brad didn’t just show you those pictures of Nikki with Trump (this one and this one), rather than linking to them, the answer is simple: Because copyright.

    I looked around for one from that grip-and-grin session that was in the public domain, but was not successful.

    However, I did run into this story from 2019 during my search. It told me something I didn’t know. It said in part, “Ms. Haley, a woman of color…”

    Did you know Nikki was “a woman of color?”

    Hey, maybe somebody should tell Nikki! She seems to be confused about that…

  4. Ken

    The best that can be said about Haley’s performance in the video above is that she did not warmly embrace the vile historical and constitutional interpretations offered by those speaking to her.

    But that does not alter the fact that she totally lacks depth. She is a resumé stuffer, nothing more. Now that she’s toted up a couple of items to her resumé she presumes that she is ready for the highest of public offices. She is not. US Amb to the UN is probably the least consequential (sometime) cabinet post there is. Which leaves her, as a candidate, lacking in substance.

    And while we’re on the topic of political character, there’s also this:

    State Rep. Micah Caskey, together with a raft of other members of the Irresponsible Caucus, not only voted for but happily sponsored the so-called “Constitutional – read: permitless – Carry” bill that passed the SC House this week. We’ve been told time and again on this blog that Caskey is not among the radical fringe of his party. But time and again he votes in a manner that makes him indistinguishable from it. Those who sound reasonable but vote to the contrary while holding office pose more danger than those who sound unreasonable in an effort to obtain office.

  5. Barry

    Haley called for mental competency tests for politicians at age 75 in her kick off speech.

    Yesterday she went on Fox News and they asked her about Trump and she said she is sure he’d do great on it. LOL.

    It must stink to have to constantly rub the back of what is now your opponent because you are terrified of his supporters.

    it reminds me of a man or woman who has a habit of defending the woman/man who propositioned their spouse for an adulterous affair.

    McMaster is 75 and will be 76 in 3 months. She didn’t mention him- and of course none of the folks at Fox would ask her about it.

  6. Barry

    Not sure if folks saw this – but yesterday a lot of documents from the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News were released.

    It shows the most senior executives at Fox News ridiculing some of their reporters for stating that there was no evidence of fraud that would call into question Biden’s win.

    Texts were released that showed Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity talking about wanting to try to get Jacqui Henrich, a Fox White House reporter, fired for stating on the air that there was no evidence of the type of fraud that would change an election (of course that was true).

    Texts and emails also shows that Suzanne Scott who heads up Fox and also oversees the “news division” at Fox complaining that the network’s election night “brain-room” that correctly called Arizona for Joe Biden was damaging their credibility with their audience.

    Get that- they were damaging the credibility of Fox by accurately reporting the results of the election that showed Joe Biden winning.

    Wow. No wonder we live in 2 totally different countries.

    One Fox producer that works for Laura Ingraham wrote in texts that Laura was driving her absolutely crazy because Laura kept entertaining the conspiracy theories on her show even though Laura knew they weren’t true. The producer said she kept telling Laura to quit promoting this nutty stuff but Laura wouldn’t stop because too many in her audience believed it- even though Laura knew it was all lies. That tells you all you need to know about her.

    There are other numerous texts and emails showing Fox Hosts were calling Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and Rudy G “crazy” “nuts” “liars” etc – but then going on the air and telling their audience that Powell and Rudy had discovered cheating by election officials.

    Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo- who use to be a pretty reliable straight news business reporter at CNBC – was communicating with Republican officials in the Trump administration on what to say on her show to her audience about the election. Maria was called out by other Fox hosts like Bret Baier and others behind the scenes for repeating what Fox knew to be not true to her audience about the Dominion voting machines. Same thing for Lou Dobbs who was ultimately fired. Dobbs really didn’t hide the fact that he was communicating with the White House almost every day on messaging.

    There are numerous emails showing Sean Hannity writing that Powell was crazy, and then that very night having her on his show to air or conspiracy theories to his audience without pushback from him.

    The documents also show a VERY passive Bret Baier (the guy Fox holds out as a “straight news” host) very tentatively pushing back on some of the crazy claims being made by Fox hosts on the air – but in typical Bret Baier fashion, he didn’t protest much.

    There is no evidence in any of the material that the Fox News self described “media guy” Howard Kurtz who portrays himself as a media watchdog had any issues or said anything about any of the hypocrisy going on at Fox.

    Pretty interesting stuff reading the actual emails and texts.

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