John Bolton blasts Nikki Haley White House bid: ‘Really running for vice president’
Ryan King
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Former national security adviser John Bolton theorized that Nikki Haley’s 2024 presidential run is really aimed at locking down the vice presidency.
In an interview prior to Haley’s surprise announcement Tuesday, Bolton insinuated that she will have a credibility problem because of her past coziness with Donald Trump and contended that the former president will “have a lot of fun” with her past flip-flopping on the campaign trail.
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“I think Nikki is really running for vice president. That’s my sense. I think she has a problem because she first said she wouldn’t run if President Trump ran. And her justification for changing was that a lot of things have changed, which I don’t think is very convincing,” Bolton told NBC’s Meet the Press on Monday.
Last year, Bolton teased that he is contemplating jumping into the 2024 fray if a strong Republican alternative who stands up to Trump fails to emerge. “I think people know where I stand on Trump,” he said.
“I think Trump will have a lot of fun with it,” he added, referring to Haley’s past courting of Trump. Bolton served alongside Haley briefly in the Trump administration as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Both of them were focused on the foreign policy arena.
Trump has already begun dusting off his fiery onslaughts against Haley, having posted an old clip to Truth Social of Haley vowing to back him in 2024 amid rumors she was mulling a run.
Bolton previously wrote scathingly about Haley’s performance in the Trump administration, describing her as a “free electron” who focused more on her political aspirations than her foreign policy duties in his memoir The Room Where It Happened.
He has also jabbed at former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, arguing that his “lack of character renders him unfit” to serve as president.
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Haley announced her 2024 campaign in a surprise video Tuesday, calling for a “new generation of leadership.” She is slated to make a special announcement Wednesday in Charleston, South Carolina, which had been speculated to be her 2024 campaign launch.
That will be followed by campaign stops in New Hampshire and Iowa. Now that she has declared, she is the first major Republican to challenge Trump in the GOP presidential primary. Other top Republicans such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) are also rumored to be considering a run.