‘The Most Entertaining Dead-Cat Bounce in History’
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Not very long ago, the harshest thing Nikki Haley would say about Donald Trump was that “chaos follows him”—a sort of benign jab that creatively avoids causation and suggests mere correlation, like noting that scorched trees tend to appear after a forest fire.
For most of the Republican-primary campaign to date, Haley adopted a carefully modulated approach toward the former president, and reserved most of her barbs for her other primary rivals. Her motto seemed to be “Speak softly about Trump and carry a sharp stick for Vivek Ramaswamy.” Recently, though, Haley has made a hard pivot.
[Read: What Nikki Haley (maybe) learned in New Hampshire]
Just two days after she came in (a distant) second to Trump in the New Hampshire primary, she for the first time after the former president said that anyone who continues to support her will be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp,” whatever that means.
