The chair of the Republican National Committee earned backlash online after she called on presidential candidate Nikki Haley to drop out of the race.
Ronna McDaniel said the former South Carolina governor should pull out in a conversation with Fox News, after Haley was confirmed to have finished in second place in the New Hampshire primary behind favorite Donald Trump.
I’m looking at the map and the path going forward and I don’t see it for Nikki Haley, she said. I think she has run a great campaign, but I do think there is a message that is coming out from the voters which is very clear ‘we need to unite around our eventual nominee’ which is going to be Donald Trump ‘and we need to make sure we beat Joe Biden.’
It is 10 months [until] the November election and we can’t wait any longer to put our foot on the gas to beat the worst president…We need to do everything we can to unite and defeat him.
The comments caused concern among some on social media, including former House Republican aide and political strategist Rina Shah.
Shah, a self-professed member of the Never Trump cohort of Republicans opposed to the 45th president, said McDaniel should be ashamed of her comments.
As the head of the GOP who, she has said is only responsible for being a turnout operation, she ought to be ashamed of herself for engaging in election interference, Shah wrote on X.
Commentator and editor-in-chief of independent news network Meidas Touch, Ron Filipkowski, said: This is not the job of an RNC Chair. The Party Chair is supposed to stay neutral. This party has been corrupted to its core. It is no longer a functioning political party. It is an autocratic personality cult.
Trump has also called on Haley to drop out, apparently taking issue with some of the positivity coming out of her campaign.
Could somebody please explain to Nikki Haley that she lost – and lost really badly, Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform. She also lost Iowa, BIG, last week. They were, as certain Non-Fake Media says, ‘CRUSHING DEFEATS.’
At the time of writing, Haley was reported to have garnered around 43.3 percent of the votes, compared to Trump on over 54 percent. But Haley and her team insisted the results are not a death knell for her campaign, despite the obvious electoral mountain she has to climb.
New Hampshire was considered to be more in Haley’s favor than her third place finish in Iowa, where she ended up more than 30 points behind Trump.
Voters in the Granite State include independents and Haley’s campaign hoped their presence would help her derail the apparent procession to the nomination by the Trump camp. She was closer to Trump in New Hampshire, but a loss of over 10 points remains a significant victory for the former president.
This race is far from over, Haley insisted. There are dozens of states left to go, and the next one is my sweet state of South Carolina.
Trump is still favorite in South Carolina and Senator Tim Scott has endorsed him over Haley.
It is time for the Republican party to coalesce around our nominee and the next president of United States, Donald Trump, he told Trump’s supporters at his victory speech on January 23.
Mary Frances Berry, the Geraldine R. Segal professor of American Social Thought at the University of Pennsylvania, told Newsweek before the New Hampshire primary that a close second would suffice to keep a Haley candidacy viable. Berry added that the primaries looked more favorable to Trump after that.
Some have continued to back Haley, including New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. Sununu told Fox he believes Haley has the best chance of beating President Joe Biden, the assumed Democratic Party nominee, in a November election.
