It would have been interesting to be part of conversations with Nikki Haley’s nascent presidential campaign about appearing on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show.
On the one hand, the guy still gets good ratings broadcasting to a heavily Republican audience, albeit not as good these days as his colleague Tucker Carlson. On the other hand, Hannity has been in the tank for Donald Trump since the 2016 Republican primary. The Fox News host has a keenly tuned sensor for shifts in the direction of the Republican base, but his loyalty to the former president is both deeply rooted and a component of his own popularity.
So while one should never assume that an appearance on Hannity’s show will be rooted in any sort of objectivity, for Haley — the first confirmed challenger to Trump’s bid for the Republican Party’s 2024 nomination — an appearance would almost certainly run the risk of being positioned as anti-Trump to a pro-Trump audience.
Which, when Haley appeared on Hannity’s show on Wednesday night, seemed to be the goal.
Hannity began with a straightforward presentation of Haley’s announcement speech earlier that day. He showed a snippet of her speech centered on her identity. And then he started the spin.
“When asked about her announcement, the only other announced candidate for presidency in 2024 for the Republicans, President Trump, said, quote: The more the merrier,” Hannity said. “But of course, the left wasted no time attacking her.”
Well, actually, when Haley announced her intent to run on Tuesday, the first person to attack her was Trump, whose campaign sent out a lengthy list of attacks on the former South Carolina governor. (Among them: that Haley was inspired to run for office by Hillary Clinton.) But, again, this is Hannity, so what do you expect?
Anyway, Hannity went on to show one anti-Haley tweet and a snippet from “The View” before nailing Haley with his most urgent question: “If you had to delineate where, say, you and President Trump differ on issues, where would you start?”
Now, look. Haley has been a politician for a long time. She is very adept at answering the question she wants to answer and not the one she was asked. So instead of addressing the point, she simply rattled off a distillation of her announcement speech, probably just as she and her team had discussed when weighing the Hannity invite.
Contained within that distillation, though, were some direct digs at Trump — albeit not ones related to issues.
“We need new generational leadership,” she said at one point, later adding that “you need a Washington outsider” — no longer the case with a former president, certainly — and that “we’ve got too many politicians in D.C. that are past their prime.” What’s more, she implored viewers, sign up to aid her campaign if they were tired of losing, “because we’ve lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president.”
Winking so hard she’s going to strain her orbicularis oculi muscle. (Yes, I had to Google that.)
Hannity marveled at Haley’s suggestion that she might win the popular vote. Haley replied by asserting that the Republican Party needed to “expand [its] tent.”
“We have to bring Hispanics and we have to bring the Jewish community and we need to bring the Asian community and we need to bring African Americans in,” she said, “because our policies are right.”
Both Hannity’s question and Haley’s answer again centered on Trump, of course. Hannity would certainly be loath to suggest that a non-Trump Republican would win more votes since that implies that Trump isn’t an ideal Republican candidate. And Haley’s embrace of a bigger tent echoes the party’s post-2012 assessment of how it needed to move forward — an assessment that Trump submarined by demonstrating that there was still electoral strength that could be wrung out of the right-wing, White base. (When the party underperformed in 2022, thanks in large part to Trump, the Republican National Committee again talked about improving its appeal to non-White voters.)
After that aside, Hannity got back to his point, demanding that Haley differentiate herself from Trump to his viewers.
“Where do you see — if you see — policy differences beyond what you mentioned, which are generational differences?” he prompted.
“I don’t kick sideways,” Haley said, suggesting she was above intraparty squabbling. “I’m kicking forward. Joe Biden is the president. He’s the one I’m running against.”
Oh, but also:
“What I’m saying is you don’t have to be 80 years old to be president,” she continued. “We don’t need to have these same people going back again. We need something new. We need a new generation of fighters.”
Kicking both sideways and forward at once!
That was where the conversation ended. (Well, after Haley plugged her website again.) It seems safe to declare Haley the winner, making her points without casting Trump’s politics in an unfavorable light. Or even saying his name.
But this is instructive as an example of how at least one Trump opponent thinks she can peel away votes. Not by criticizing Trump as dangerous or his policies as incorrect, but by implying that you have no real differences from Trump except that you can do better in November. Everything you love about Trump without the losing!
Hannity, for one, didn’t seem convinced.