GOP lawmaker calls Haley ‘a brunette Liz Cheney’

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) is dismissing GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley as a “brunette Liz Cheney” and questioning her conservative bona fides after she slammed her Republican rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for having Massie on the campaign trail over the weekend.

“She hates free speech as much as she loves war and foreign aid,” Massie posted on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, on Monday morning.

Haley called out DeSantis during a campaign event in Iowa on Sunday, a day after Massie joined him in Iowa.

“You can’t be pro-Israel and bring the most anti-Israel Republican into this state, who voted against fighting antisemitism on college campuses,” she said. “And that’s who he brought to your state.”

During an appearance Monday in Iowa, Haley doubled down on her comments about DeSantis and Massie, calling him “the most anti-Israel Republican there is.”

“[Massie] voted with the Squad against calling out antisemitism on college campuses,” she said. “Voted with the Squad against hitting the presidents that were allowing it to happen … That’s who he brought to Iowa, so let [DeSantis] answer for that.”

Cheney, a Republican and former House member from Wyoming, has become a boogeyman for far-right conservatives since she broke with former President Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Her book “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning,” which details her split from Trump loyalists and calls for the party to go back to its pre-Trump roots, came out earlier this month.

Massie is the only House Republican who voted last week against an antisemitism resolution that was largely prompted by reports of an uptick in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Massie said he objected to language that equated anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

DeSantis’s campaign defended his appearance with Massie, who was the second House Republican to endorse DeSantis.

“Ron DeSantis has been the clearest, most consistent pro-Israel candidate in the race,” DeSantis’s campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin told The Associated Press. “He has unequivocally supported Israel in exterminating Hamas.”

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) cosigned Massie’s message, likening Haley to former Presidents Obama and George W. Bush, as well as President Biden.

“[T]rue uniparty and globalist,” she wrote on X alongside Massie’s original post. Greene has endorsed Trump.

Haley and DeSantis have been jockeying to gain traction in the fight for the Republican presidential nomination, though Trump has remained the clear front-runner with a strong lead in all polls.

The Iowa caucuses, on Jan. 15, are the first test for the GOP field.

Updated at 3:54 p.m.