Ambassador Nikki Haley ripped into two of the president-elect’s top appointees, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on her radio show.
And he is doing so with the backing of broadly supportive congressional Republicans who have little political incentive to listen to his detractors.
Trump’s convincing win allowed the president-elect to quickly consolidate power within his party as he prepares to return to Washington.
And it has scattered the remnants of the Republican resistance to him back to their respective corners to regroup.
“Who cares what Mike Pence thinks?” said Mike Davis, the former Senate GOP aide and Trump’s most outspoken legal defender.
Some of his most well-known Republican critics were left scurrying for relevance in a reorganized GOP after Donald Trump’s victory further enclosed out his MAGA outcasts and shattered the already shattered Never Trump movement.
Recently, former U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley attacked Robert F. Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard, two of the president-elect’s top picks. Kennedy, Jr. on her radio program. Former Representative from Virginia. Trump’s nominees were mocked by Barbara Comstock as a Cabinet full of “pedophiles and Putinists.”. Then, as Trump’s secretary of health and human services, former vice president Mike Pence tried to mobilize conservatives who opposed abortion against Kennedy.
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From the sidelines, however, they are yelling their warnings as Trump continues to transform Washington into his MAGA image after already reorganizing their party. Additionally, he has the support of congressional Republicans who are generally in agreement with him and who have little political motivation to pay attention to his critics.
Scott Reed, the seasoned GOP strategist and head of the Pro-Pence Committed to America PAC, stated that the Lincoln Project and Never Trumpers simply need to go back to their rock for a few years.
As he gets ready to return to Washington, Trump was able to swiftly solidify his standing within his party thanks to his resounding victory. The remaining Republican resistance to him has also been dispersed, forcing them to reorganize in their separate areas.
Some still think they can turn around a GOP that has almost completely bowed to Trump, such as Haley and Pence, who oppose their former boss on some issues but support him on others. However, others have given up on bringing back Republicanism as they knew it, especially those who were part of the original Never-Trump movement but were later pushed aside by their party or left on their own initiative.
The reelection of the former president has taken reforming the Republican Party “off the table,” according to Joe Walsh, a well-known Trump critic and former GOP congressman who ran against him for the party’s nomination in 2020 before switching to the independent ticket. Additionally, it has diminished the likelihood that disgruntled Republicans will start a new party, he thinks.
“There are only two choices,” Walsh stated during an interview. Throw rocks at the administration in a productive manner; act as if we were a group living in exile and, from a distance, do our best to harm MAGA because we know we can never return or turn into Democrats. “.”.
The former seems to be the first target of Trump’s GOP critics, who are using his Cabinet selection process as a means of reclaiming their political relevance and continuing to oppose his MAGA agenda.
Using her radio show, Haley, a more conventional foreign policy hawk, recently attacked Gabbard’s foreign policy beliefs, calling the former Democratic congresswoman a “Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.”. She also criticized Kennedy, calling him a “liberal Democrat” with “no experience in healthcare.”. “.”.
Then there is Pence, who, following his own unsuccessful presidential campaign, refused to support his former running mate. After initially expressing his approval of Trump’s first Cabinet choices, the conservative former vice president attacked Kennedy, who has voiced divergent opinions on abortion, as “deeply concerning to millions of Pro-Life Americans who have supported the Republican Party and our nominees for decades.”. “.”.
However, the views of Haley and Pence, as well as the more adamantly anti-Trump Republicans who have denounced his Cabinet choices as either unfit for their potential positions or detrimental to national security, aren’t exactly well-liked within the MAGA movement.
Trump’s most vocal attorney, Mike Davis, a former Senate GOP aide, said, “Who cares what Mike Pence thinks?”. While Haley’s team chose not to comment, Pence’s team did not reply to a request for comment.
Furthermore, it is uncertain if Trump’s detractors will use the meager political capital—and funds—that they have through their super PACs and advocacy groups, like Pence’s Advancing American Freedom, to block any of his nominations that they believe contain issues.
Instead, a wide range of Trump’s detractors are counting on Congress to withstand his more contentious actions. Additionally, they are seeing encouraging signs in the early resistance efforts by Senate Republicans, such as the selection of John Thune (R-S). D. ) as majority leader over Rick Scott, even though Trump’s supporters pushed the scandal-plagued former Florida Representative and supported the senator from Florida. Trump could use his nuclear option, recess appointments, to compel Matt Gaetz to run for attorney general, or he could remove him from the race before he could be put to a vote.
Trump can only be restrained by “the kind of in-group moderates, the Republican Party members who won’t give Trump carte blanche and who will push back against the most damaging things,” stated Sarah Longwell, a GOP strategist and publisher of The Bulwark who opposes Trump. “You will need Republican Party members to resist giving in to Trump entirely. “.”.
But once Trump returns to office in January and the process of screening his Cabinet candidates moves out of the shadows, congressional Republicans might be less inclined to oppose him. Public disobedience puts one at risk for both Trump’s wrath and primary challenges in 2026, as few GOP senators are likely to be reelected without the support of their constituents.
The next Congress will see a further decline in the number of Trump’s opponents in the upper house. Additionally, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the two Republican senators who voted against him, will no longer be sufficient to sabotage a nomination on their own.
In an interview, Geoff Duncan, the former Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia who supported Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump, stated that “it has to start in Congress.”. “You need senators with a serious mindset who are prepared to stick to the conservative stance and weed out as much resentment and complaint-filled decision-making as they can. “”.
However, if that barrier fails, the remaining traces of the larger Trump opposition may also fail.
Former Michigan GOP executive director and Lincoln Project member Jeff Timmer told POLITICO, when asked where Never Trumpers go from here: “You mean reeducation camps? I’m being optimistic.”. “”.
