There is little the Beltway media loves more than a gaffe. When a politician lets slip some statement, judged as insulting or offensive to voters by the pundits, it's generally treated as an all-hands-on-deck coverage moment. Gaffes far surpass any attention given to policy positions or governing philosophy. Some crafty campaigners weaponize the press's gaffe obsession, by "accidentally" articulating views that will offend the pundits, but will thrill the voters they're trying to reach. It's why so many candidates "forget" their microphones are turned on.
All of which is a long-winded way of arguing that it's not a mistake, the way former Gov. Nikki Haley, R-S.C., keeps saying ugly things about race. It's unlikely she actually "forgot," as many outlets suggested, to mention slavery when asked by a New Hampshire voter what caused the Civil War. She was just placating the presidential primary voters of the GOP who tend to get fussy whenever suggests there's a downside to white supremacy. Rather than discouraging her from pandering to racists, the media attention Haley got for this so-called gaffe only emboldened her. She coughed up the "I had Black friends" cliché, which garnered another round of liberal condemnation, which just makes someone more popular with the MAGA base.
Tuesday, Haley removed all doubt that this is anything but deliberate, by telling Fox News, "We've never been a racist country."
Nikki Haley: "We've never been a racist country" pic.twitter.com/qcB0wTjvJS
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 16, 2024
Even if Haley wasn't trying to catch press with her initial Civil War comments, she no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. She's doing this on purpose. On CNN Thursday night, she even recommended lying to children about it, saying, "for every brown and Black child out there, if you tell them they live or are born in a racist country, you’re immediately telling them they don’t have a chance." Which is countered by literally every successful person of color, most of whom grew up well aware of the country's racist history.
She's centering this extremely silly — and evil — lie in her campaign.
America is Not a racist country. pic.twitter.com/mYe0wW6QBa
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) August 25, 2020
Liberal outrage is the drug of choice for the MAGA base Haley wants to win over. Note that Haley was responding to a viral clip from Joy Reid, in which the MSNBC host said Haley is "still a Brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant." That context makes it clear that Haley is trying to reassure the sensitive snowflakes who vote in the GOP primary that she doesn't hold their racism against them, or even, apparently, acknowledge the reality of it.
Reid was proven right in record time, as Donald Trump has launched a campaign against Haley that's incredibly racist, even by his own basement-level standards. He floated one of his "birther" conspiracies, falsely claiming her immigrant parents render her ineligible to hold office. (He has made the same claim of every presidential candidate he perceives as non-white, going back, of course, to President Barack Obama.) He and his allies have been mocking her birth name, Nimarata Randhawa, trying to draw attention to her Sikh Indian background. (She goes by her middle name and married name. Trump, however, does know something about changing names to hide an ethnic background, as that's what his own family did in the early 20th century.) He falsely claims she wants "OPEN BORDERS" and accused her of trying to "infiltrate your Republican primary," playing on his usual tropes of portraying people of color as secret invaders out to steal stuff from white people.
Much of the press is treating Trump's onslaught as a response to Haley's supposed "momentum," which is allegedly making her a campaign threat. It's true that Trump's brain is addled by over-consumption of cable news, so there is a thin possibility that he's caught up in the hype falsely implying she has a snowball's chance of winning the primary. But that's unlikely, both because he's so far ahead in the polls and because his campaign's strategy has been to treat the primary as a coronation, not a contest.
No, the primary is merely a pretext. Trump's going full-birther on Haley for two reasons. One, nothing gives him pleasure like being a racist bully. Two, it helps reinforce his main campaign message: The United States is meant to be a white Christian ethnostate, and anyone who doesn't belong to the MAGA tribe is not a "real" American.
Trump hasn't been subtle about how this fascist messaging is central not just to his barely-there primary strategy but is the core of his general election campaign. He gives speeches arguing that non-white immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," directly echoing similar rhetoric used by Hitler in the 1930s. He's campaigning as a Christian nationalist. He openly characterizes secular and inclusive policies as "persecution" of Christians, who are meant to be seen as the only "true" Americans.
As Sarah Posner of MSNBC aptly put it, "Trump is now the leader of the Christian right." This is despite the fact that Trump, even after 8 years of pretending to believe in Jesus and the Bible, hasn't learned basic facts about the faith he pretends to hold. Such as that you pray to God, not for God.
"We will pray for God" -- Trump pic.twitter.com/nVhBrBFzEX
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 14, 2024
This must gall Haley, who converted to Christianity and got baptized in the 90s. It seems that, for much of her career, that sufficed to make her a "real" Christian in the eyes of Republican voters. But, as I've written about before, the identity of "Christian" and especially of "evangelical" has shifted in recent years within the world of Republicans. It's less about believing in Jesus Christ or belonging to a church these days, at least for the MAGA base. Now it's a marker of tribal identity, tied closely to whiteness. Haley may know prayer and the Bible, unlike Trump, but he's more "Christian" to them than she is because he's white. That's why 64% of Republicans say Trump is a "person of faith" but only 44% say the same of Haley.
Not that anyone should feel an ounce of pity for Haley. As her recent rash of race-baiting comments shows, she is only too happy to suck up to racists, if she thinks it will get their votes. When Trump is out there shoveling out his bigoted provocations, Haley has been right behind him, reassuring everyone that there's nothing wrong with his behavior. It's the same song and dance Republican women do with regard to gender, imagining that complicity with a sexist system will protect them. In a sense, it has helped Haley, who snagged some plum jobs over the years by downplaying racism. But now the same ugly bigotries are coming for her. She spent all this time validating such attacks against other people, and now there's no one around to defend her.
