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Nikki Haley breaks with Donald Trump: ‘We need to acknowledge he let us down’

Danielle Vinson, Department of Politics and International Affairs.

Last updated February 22, 2021

By Tina Underwood

Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has publicly decried former President Donald Trump, saying, “The person that I worked with is not the person that I have watched since the election.” Expanding on Haley’s recent remarks, which appeared in a POLITICO story and in a speech she gave on Jan. 7, The Post and Courier reached out to Danielle Vinson, a professor of politics and international affairs at Furman University.

Vinson says Haley’s comments represent another example how the 2024 presidential hopeful seeks to “please both wings of the Republican Party: the Trump-loving base and the more traditional conservative establishment” – and that posture can be dicey. “The thing with walking the middle ground is sometimes it works and you get some of both sides, but sometimes it fails spectacularly and you get neither side,” Vinson says.

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