As the First Debate of the 2024 voting season approaches, many have wondered why Nikki Haley is not on Donald Trump’s Short List for the Vice Presidential nomination. Some believe that Trump was insulted when she broke her word not to run against him in the primaries given long ago. I believe there is a better and more logical reason. It can he summed up in one word: LOYALTY.
In November of 2019, Nikki Haley, the former US Ambassador to he United Nations, publish her memoir entitled “With all Due Respect – Defending America with Grit and Grace.” Haley describes her selection by Trump to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. She also writes about historical events and some of her interactions with other senior administration officials during her time in office.
In Chapter 8, Changing the Culture, Page 150, Haley makes an interesting disclosure: “Kelly and Tillerson [Trump’s Chief of Staff and Secretary of State, respectively] confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country. It was their decisions, not the president's, that were in the best interest of America, they said, The president didn’t know what he was doing. She was told that they wanted her to work with them in a long conversation that went on for over an hour.”
After reading her book, I did not find any indication – maybe I missed it – that she told President Trump that she had been approached by his Chief of Staff and her superior, the Secretary of State, who asked her to work with them instead of taking direction from the President, in effect sabotaging Trump’s wishes in his handling of international affairs and failing to carry out the President’s policies.
It does not appear to me that LOYALTY is an asset of Trump’s former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations when it applies to the person who selected her. I imagine that after Trump read her book after its publication, he had the same feeling about Haley. While loyalty may be difficult to express, I would imagine that the Ambassador should have shown loyalty to the Constitution, then the President elected by the people, then the Secretary of State having been confirmed by the Senate, and finally to the President’s Chief of staff who was selected by the President, needing no confirmation by the Senate. She seemed to have reversed her order of loyalty and failed to tell the President that two of his key people were plotting against him.
Why would Trump want Haley on his ticket? He has had enough trouble dealing with the Democrats.