I've been saying for a while that Trump is his own worst enemy, and it kills me that he continues to prove me right. I don't like it, and I wish he would think about what he's going to say before he says it.
And he really stepped in it during a campaign rally in Atkinson, New Hampshire.
“Nikki Haley is a disaster,” he told the crowd. “She worked for me for a long time. I know her very well. I actually put her there for a different reason. I shouldn't say this, but she had a lieutenant governor named Henry McMaster, who is fantastic.”
Trump continued, “I figured if I took her out of the South Carolina governorship, put her someplace, any place, I put her someplace, then Henry McMaster, who is my friend and has turned out to be a great governor in South Carolina, Henry McMaster will become the governor. So I moved her to the United Nations. And honestly, she was not a good negotiator. She was not a good negotiator. Now she likes to talk about when I negotiated with China… I negotiated with China. I did all of it. We got in hundreds of billions of dollars, and I did it.”
I know Trump is trying to stave off a strong showing by Haley in the upcoming New Hampshire primary, but this was just the most absurd way to do it because his attack on Haley effectively undermined a key case for his own election. As a candidate in 2016, Donald Trump, a political newcomer, lauded his leadership skills, proclaiming that he would only pick the best people for his administration.
"I’m going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people," he said. "We want top-of-the-line professionals."
Flashback: Who Would Dare Serve in a New Trump Administration?
Yet if we're to believe this attack on Haley, he didn't hire her because she was "the best and most serious" person for the job at all. For a man who demands unwavering loyalty from those around him, what loyalty is he offering in return? If you've only been hired to let someone else take over your job, do you think Trump is going to have your back? Why would he?
That said, I suspect this is just his way of trashing Haley before the primary and isn't a reflection of the actual calculus involved in picking her as UN ambassador.
Haley is hardly the first person he hired whom he has since trashed. Trump's dissatisfaction with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions grew rapidly due to Sessions' refusal to halt the investigation into alleged Russian collusion.
Trump went on to trash his secretary of defense, Gen. James "Mad Dog" Mattis, after the two men had successfully revitalized the military and achieved foreign policy successes, calling him an "overrated" general over a disagreement over how to handle Syria. Then he bizarrely attacked his former press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, for daring to report on a poll that suggested that Ron DeSantis was closing the gap.
Similarly, Donald Trump had only positive things to say about Ron DeSantis before he started considering running for president in 2024. Now, he can't say enough bad things about him, making up bogus accusations and ridiculous lies, which, again, cast doubt on his own judgment because he not only endorsed DeSantis for governor in 2018 but also routinely praised him and the job he was doing as governor.
Do better, Trump. Do better.
