Nikki Haley: Liberal media ‘wants to stoke a nonstop Republican civil war’

Nikki Haley, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, accused “the liberal media” of instigating a GOP civil war in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday, while offering her thoughts on how the Republican Party should proceed in the post-Trump era.

Haley wrote that the media goes “berserk” whenever a GOP official criticizes former President Trump. The former South Carolina governor argued that such conduct attempts to “pit conservatives against one another,” and that it’s a “ridiculous false choice.”

“Real life is never that simple. Someone can do both good and bad things,” Haley wrote.

“People feel strongly about Mr. Trump, but we can acknowledge reality,” she added. “People on the right can find fault with Trump actions, including on Jan. 6. Right or left, when people make these distinctions, they’re not trying to have it both ways. They’re using their brains.”

Haley called on the GOP to be “honest about what worked and what didn’t over the past four years,” and warned that continued infighting would only benefit the party’s opponents on the left.

“We can’t go back to the pre-Trump GOP. Those days are over, and they should be,” Haley wrote. “But we lost our majorities in the House and Senate, and we’ve lost the national popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections. Surely there’s room for improvement as a party.”

Haley made headlines this month when she broke with Trump in an interview published by Politico, saying she was “disappointed” and “disgusted” by Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, when he spoke at a rally rally shortly before a group of rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol.

“He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again,” she said in the interview.

Despite those remarks, Haley still praised Trump’s work in office, writing in Wednesday’s op-ed that she considered most of his policies “outstanding,” while still condemning his actions after the election. She noted that although he brought millions of voters to the GOP, the party also lost voters during his presidency.

“I will gladly defend the bulk of the Trump record and his determination to shake up the corrupt status quo in Washington,” she added. “I will never defend the indefensible. I didn’t do that when I served alongside President Trump, and I’m not going to start now.”

Haley has recently sprung back into the spotlight as a possible contender for the 2024 presidential election. She announced the formation of a new political action committee in January with the purpose of helping the GOP retake the House and Senate in 2022.