There has been some buzz in recent weeks about former President Donald Trump considering his former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who is challenging Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination, to be his running mate and potential vice president in a second term.
That idea has been sharply criticized and dismissed by numerous Trump allies and supporters, including now Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, as they do not believe that Haley fully supports Trump's America First agenda, according to Breitbart.
Noem, whose name has also been floated as a possible Trump VP pick, made it clear that she would register her disagreement with the choice of Haley as VP but would still vote for the former president even if the former South Carolina governor was on the ticket.
Mediaite reported that Gov. Noem appeared Tuesday on Newsmax and was asked by host Eric Bolling if it would be a "mistake" for former President Trump to pick former Ambassador Haley as his running mate, to which Noem immediately replied, "Yes."
"But if he picked her, I would tell him I disagreed with him," she continued. "But then I would support the ticket because he’s still the president and the president still makes the decisions."
"And, you know, I just, I’ve had a lot of disagreements with Nikki Haley over the years," Noem continued. "And I just don’t know which Nikki Haley is gonna show up every day. She’s a different person, depending on whatever works for her political agenda."
Gov. Noem's assertion that former Gov. Haley is a "different person" depending upon the particular needs of her "political agenda" at any given moment may sound harsh to some, but Haley herself seemed to suggest as much in recent commentary that may have been a gaffe and poor choice of wording but could also have been an unintentional admission.
At a PBS-sponsored forum event in Iowa this week, Haley spoke about traveling to different states during the primary election cycle and said, "But look, the structure of it is really amazing -- Iowa starts it. You change personalities, you go into New Hampshire. They continue on, and by the time it gets to South Carolina, it gets bigger going into Super Tuesday. There’s something very cool about the process."
Potentially brutal gaffe by @NikkiHaley
“The structure of [the primary] is really amazing. Iowa starts it. YOU CHANGE PERSONALITIES, you go into New Hampshire.”
…You change personalities??? pic.twitter.com/B2BcoowwuU
— John Hasson (@SonofHas) January 6, 2024
The comment about needing to "change personalities" depending upon which state is being campaigned in, while possibly an inarticulate reference to the differences between voters in different states, was nonetheless seized upon by Haley's critics as evidence of her being a political shapeshifter with her finger in the wind who will twist and bend toward whichever direction she believes is necessary to garner support.
Breitbart noted that despite the broad pushback from many of Trump's closest allies and supporters against the idea of Haley being picked as VP, given the widespread view that she is a globalist establishmentarian unmoored by any real principles, the former president has yet to definitively dismiss the rumors that she is under consideration to be his running mate.
What Trump has done, however, is broadly downplay the overall importance of his VP pick no matter who it is by suggesting that the choice of running mate isn't a particularly important factor in the decision-making of most voters.
"If you study the history of presidential runs, a vice president has never made a difference -- which is surprising," Trump the outlet in a recent interview. "It’s a one-night story, and then they’re back to a regular evening."
"They’re voting for the president. They’re not voting for the vice president," he added. "There has, not that I can think of, never been a vice president that’s made much of a difference in terms of nomination and in terms of even winning the election."
