Possible 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley campaigns for election deniers in 2022

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under former President Donald Trump, has been traveling around the country campaigning for Republican election deniers ahead of the 2022 midterms.

Haley is seen as a potential Republican candidate for president in 2024.

Haley has both endorsed and campaigned alongside Republican lawmakers and candidates who either voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election or have spread the lie that the election was stolen from Trump, even though she denounced Trump the month after the insurrection by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Haley told Politico in an interview published in February 2021: “I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated. I think his business is suffering at this point. I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving. … He’s not going to run for federal office again.”

She added: “We need to acknowledge he let us down. 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.”

But Haley has since endorsed Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who was part of the GOP effort to install fake Electoral College electors for Trump to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.

She’s held campaign events for two GOP Senate nominees, Adam Laxalt in Nevada and Don Bolduc in New Hampshire, who are election deniers and have spread lies about the 2020 election.

Laxalt falsely claimed that Nevada had “thousands of illegal votes consisting of a combination of dead voters, out-of-state voters, double voters.” Bolduc said that he would vote to overturn a possible Biden victory in 2024 and boasted about signing a letter endorsing the lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

Haley also campaigned alongside Rep. Mayra Flores, a Texas Republican who won a special election in June. Flores has multiple times refused to say that Biden was legitimately elected and spread false conspiracy theories that the Capitol insurrection was a false flag operation, sharing in a since-deleted tweet the assertion that “DC police let them through the gates! This was a set up! Antifa is definitely among this crowd!!!”

Haley was recently asked during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” on Oct. 3 whether she believes election denialism is a “disqualifier” for office. In response, Haley deflected, saying the candidates she’s been campaigning for believe the election was “real.”

“I don’t know that I’ve talked to anyone that’s denied the election results. Everybody that I’m helping acknowledges the fact that the elections, you know, were real,” Haley said.

The candidates she endorsed have denied that the results of the 2020 election were legitimate.

Despite initially denouncing Trump, Haley has since come around, saying she would back him if he ran for president again in 2024.

“I would not run if President Trump ran and I would talk to him about it,” Haley said in April 2021.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.