There was a clash of opinions during a Bill Maher panel Friday night over whether former President Trump would pick his former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley as his vice president.
Following his major victory at the Iowa caucuses, Trump is now widely seen as the presumptive Republican nominee, which is already fueling conversations on who his running mate would be. After months of hedging on the subject, Haley told voters in New Hampshire this week “I don’t want to be anybody’s vice president” while Trump said at a rally Friday night she “probably” won’t be on the ticket.
During the “Overtime” segment of his HBO show, Maher asked his panel who is on Trump’s running mate short list, first naming Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who has gotten VP buzz in recent weeks.
“She used to be a normal and then became a Trump crazy,” Maher said.
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Despite the ongoing tension between Trump and Haley, MSNBC host Ari Melber responded by saying Trump would pick the former South Carolina governor, sparking an immediate “no” from Maher.
“I think he’s teamed up with people who’ve said way worse things- [Ohio Senator] JD Vance wrote a whole book and launch his career attacking Trump,” Melber said.
“He doesn’t care about any of that,” Maher responded.
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“Although there are parts of MAGA as we discussed that might not love her,” Melber continued, “if Trump says this is it, and he’s very practical and she would help in the suburbs, which is his biggest general election vulnerability. I think there’s a lot of the actual numbers people around Trump who are trying to get them to think about that. It would probably give him several points.”
Melber later added, “Bill, you said tonight it looks like he can get reelected. He definitely could. But he got 3 million fewer votes in 16. He got 7 million fewer votes in 20. And they had bad midterms and the Democrats have won every state-based special election in the last year. If he’s gonna win, which he could, he’s can’t run as the 20 or 16 version of him. And the ticket is the first, largest way to say to the suburbs I’m a little different.”
“The trouble with Nikki is that she makes, sort of, Dick Cheney look like the Dalai Lama,” Substack writer Andrew Sullivan chimed in. “There is not a country she wouldn’t invade, not a country she wouldn’t bomb. She is the most unreconstructed neocon I’ve ever come across in politics.. And Trump’s entire message is I’m not an unreconstructed neocon!”
“You’re giving voters way too much credit,” Maher pushed back. “This is not what they’re thinking about!”
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Sullivan doubled down, “No, I think one of the issues that helped him are the people who are sick of these wars! And when they have someone who seems like they want to get into more wars, they are not going to like it. It’s a big issue!”
“I don’t think voters expect the running mate to set foreign policy, period,” Melber responded.
“I don’t think they think about foreign policy,” Maher asserted before acknowledging Ukraine as something they care about only because it’s “holding up immigration.”
“They care about this country. What’s going on in this country just the way most people watch local news, they don’t want national news,” the HBO host said.
“They don’t want the wars, which Nikki represents. That’s their position on foreign policy,” Sullivan said before Melber added, “The median Trump voter doesn’t think that he’s going to take the cues from her on that.”
