The Memo: Haley rains verbal blows on Trump as clock ticks down in South Carolina

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Nikki Haley desperately needs a home state surprise if she is to maintain any semblance of competitiveness in the battle for the GOP nomination.

The former United Nations ambassador is leaving no stone unhurled as she tries to put a dent in former President Trump’s huge polling lead here in advance of Saturday’s primary.

It feels more like a defiant last stand than a candidate detecting any real scent of a comeback. Even her supporters acknowledge the long odds she faces.

But Haley is at least going down fighting.

At an early-evening speech in this resort city, she simply stated: “Donald Trump can’t win a general election.”

Speaking at twilight, with her campaign bus as her backdrop, Haley assailed Trump for his recent remarks that he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO member nations who had not paid their dues to the organization.

Haley accused Trump of cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin and thereby “siding with a dictator who kills his political opponents.”

She also hit Trump for what she sees as his narcissism.

Amid Trump’s various legal travails, “at no point has he ever talked about the American people. … All he does is talk about himself,” Haley contended.

But the challenge Haley faces in trying to be heard over the din Trump creates was clear at a literal level here. 

Even as she spoke, the car horns of drivers honking approvingly at a small band of pro-Trump protesters could be heard from a nearby street. The pro-Trump group even included one look-alike of the former president.

The big picture for Haley is bleak.

Trump has won the three contests so far, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, by big margins. Haley lags Trump by more than 30 points in the South Carolina polling average maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ.

A loss on anything approaching that scale would be devastating to Haley in her home state, where she twice won election as governor.

Trump has mused about how hard it would be for her to continue if she gets beaten heavily here. His aides emphasize how steeply the battle for delegates has tilted in Trump’s favor.

A Tuesday memo from two of the Trump campaign’s top aides, Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, predicted that even under their “most generous” projections of how Haley might fare, the former president would secure enough delegates to become the presumptive GOP nominee by March 19.

Twisting the knife, the two Trump aides forecast that Haley’s campaign would come to an end Saturday in the Palmetto State, “rejected by those who know her best.”

Haley, on the stump, is trying to prove that familiarity breeds affection rather than contempt.

Here in Myrtle Beach and at an afternoon event before an upscale crowd in the small city of Georgetown, she cited her economic record as governor, adding sardonically that she hoped its residents did not “blame” her for the number of outsiders who moved to the state during her tenure.

Haley also referred to two deeply somber events from 2015, early in her second term as governor — the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, when a white racist killed nine Black parishioners, and the police killing of a 50-year-old Black man, Walter Scott, who was shot dead while fleeing in North Charleston.

Haley said that the main reason there was not widespread rioting and civil strife in South Carolina in the wake of those events was because “the tone at the top matters” — another obvious jab at Trump.

The question is whether such attacks move the needle electorally. 

In Georgetown, Haley lamented how “everything is chaos, everything is noise, everything is exhausting” in the nation’s politics — offering herself as the antidote.

She even mocked Trump’s avoidance of the draft for the Vietnam War, after an audience member appeared to mention “bone spurs.”

“He did say he had bone spurs; that’s why he couldn’t serve,” a laughing Haley responded. “Whatever.”

There are, to be sure, a solid number of Republican voters with whom Haley’s more modulated message resonates.

“She has the best chance to win the general election. And, you know, she doesn’t say crazy stuff all the time, like some people do,” Patrick Thompson, a novelist and retired lawyer, told The Hill as he waited for Haley to speak in Georgetown.

Thompson was accompanied by his wife and his wife’s friend, Singleton Blain. Blain said she had already cast her ballot for Haley during the early voting period.

“I think she’s a unifier. We need that desperately,” Blain said.

Another attendee, musician Marshall Chapman, said she is a Democrat but intends to vote for Haley in a bid to stop Trump, whom she termed “a madman.”

Despite the vigor of those views, it seems highly doubtful that there are enough such voices to derail the Trump Train in the Palmetto State.

Haley’s events in Georgetown and Myrtle Beach each attracted crowds roughly in the 500 range.

On Friday, Trump will hold a get-out-the-vote rally at Winthrop Coliseum, an arena in Rock Hill, S.C. 

The venue’s capacity is roughly 6,000.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.