The Ron DeSantis War Room released a video this week mocking Nikki Haley and her presidential campaign. It features clips of TV political analysts noting that Haley has spent millions to smear DeSantis but “zero on Trump,” and that Haley “refuses to criticize” the frontrunner — her former boss when she was the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Donald Trump.
The effort is part of a larger mockumentary style jab, complete with a website — TrumpNikki2024 — that pairs Trump and Haley, with the acronym MEGA (Make the Establishment Great Again).
The site opening pitch asserts: “For years, Nikki Haley has wanted to be Donald Trump’s Vice President… and now she is using her 2024 candidacy to finally make her VP dream a reality by following the lead of the former president as they’ve combined to spend over $30 million against Ron DeSantis, all while she refuses to attack Trump.”
The video, which focuses on the last point — Haley’s strained fealty to Trump — includes a clip of Trump on a plane claiming Haley called him “to ask permission to run.” (He says he told her to follow her heart.)
There’s a reason Nikki Haley has spent millions to smear Ron DeSantis.
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) December 19, 2023
There’s a reason Haley refuses to criticize Donald Trump.
There’s a reason Haley asked Trump's permission to run.
WATCH: pic.twitter.com/iQuVEjoakq
The video also features political commentators speculating that Haley will become Trump’s pick for Vice President on the 2024 GOP ticket — it ends with Trump’s signature Trump 2024 blue banner but with Nikki underneath his name and with the DeSantis-inserted slogan, “Make the Establishment Great Again!”
DeSantis’s mockumentary website quotes Marjorie Taylor Greene to substantiate the notion that Haley on the ticket would mean a furtherance of the “establishment” in Washington:
Greene, in DeSantis’s selected quote, says: “MAGA would revolt if Nikki Haley were to even be given an internship in Trump’s next administration. She represents the neocon establishment America last wing of the Republican Party that we are absolutely done with.”
With this latest pitch, DeSantis is hoping to encourage that revolt. It’s also a way for him to attack Trump from the margins and indirectly, by portraying his potential running mate as anathema to the MAGA cause — and a bad choice. It won’t be easy to pull off, especially if Trump extends the olive branch to Haley for running against him.
The DeSantis team also created a second related site called TheRealNikki where the Florida Governor seeks to expose Haley as a not-so-closeted liberal — in Trump-Wolf attire.
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