- President Joe Biden is making a play for Nikki Haley's former supporters.
- Haley endorsed Trump, but urged the former president to appeal to her millions of voters.
- A self-described centrist Republican Haley voter said he just can't support Donald Trump again.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Roger, who is affiliated with the Haley Voters Working Group. The group is comprised of former primary supporters of UN Ambassador Nikki Haley who are supporting President Joe Biden in the general election or considering supporting the president. He is only identified by his name due to the sensitivities of his continuing work on defense policy. We've also included a statement from Trump at the bottom of the story.
We are speaking to voters, officials, and others directly connected to politics this election cycle to get a first-person look at the stakes of this election. We fact-check their statements, vet our sources, and edit their responses for length and clarity.
I voted for former President Donald Trump twice. It's clear now that his behavior is one of the greatest threats to the Constitution we've ever seen. But for a few words in the 14th Amendment, he wouldn't even be eligible to be a candidate.
We're seeing it in real time. I don't want to be a part of that. We are not an autocracy. I don't know if I can vote for Joe Biden. And yes, his age is a legitimate concern. Father Time is undefeated. But if I've got a choice between an autocrat and someone of his age, I'm not choosing the autocrat. No, sir, no, thank you.
Trump started losing me when he started the shenanigans after he lost the 2020 election. All that weird stuff leading up to January 6. And if it hadn't been for Vice President Mike Pence, who is a great man, we would have been at a constitutional crossroads.
The former president will say anything, and he'll do it with a straight face. He reminds me of PT Barnum; there's a sucker born every minute. You just have to do your research. He's done tremendous damage to himself. Not once has he accepted any accountability for the messes he's gotten himself into.
Trump's a convicted felon now, though I thought the New York case was definitely the weakest one against him. Honestly, having handled classified documents in my military career, I looked at the list of things they found in the pool house and by the toilet. I was like, my goodness, he's in a heap of trouble here. You can't explain that away. He had multiple opportunities to gracefully return those documents.
Trump's treatment of Nikki Haley made it even worse.
I don't like how Trump treated Nikki Haley. The name-calling, what he said about her husband when he was deployed. My goodness, he never finds the high ground. She's one of the smartest people you'll come around who understands all of these issues. But she doesn't play to the left; MAGA hates her.
It was a stung when she endorsed him. I had to give it a little bit of reflection. I've watched the video several times. She has to remain politically viable moving forward. She is fundamentally a Republican. In the big picture, she never pretended that she was anything else. And she said that it was her personal choice. She gave the caveat in there that she encouraged him to reach out to his voters. In retrospect, he's had all this time to reach out to the over 4 million Haley voters. He's never done it. The Biden campaign actually has.
I never liked Trump's tone and the way he behaved, but I did vote for him because I thought he was right about the border. His fiscal policies were mostly sound. The border is a real issue. There's many of us that believe that this issue began back in January 2021 after President Biden was sworn in, because he turned around and canceled all of Trump's executive orders and policies. You have to understand the bigger picture here. The effect of flooding in these undocumented immigrants brings the border to New York City, Chicago, Detroit, and Atlanta. It brings the border everywhere because we are not vetting these people.
I'm an old-school Reagan fan, and Nikki Haley is a genuine Republican. She understands the importance of Ukraine. She understands the importance of how we project our foreign policy. An, if you think about it, there's a lot of crossover there that the current administration is trying to do. Trump being elected would be a disaster for Ukraine. Forty-six Republicans voted against funding NATO — that scares the devil out of me. It's like no one is paying attention to the things that are really important. We want democracy, we want liberty, and we want freedom to flourish, because that's what true American values are. We don't want to send American troops to fight over there.
Serving in the military had a profound effect on my life.
I met my wife during my first tour in Korea. We've been married 35 years now. The military is a microcosm of our society as a whole. Growing up in rural South Carolina, I learned a lot about people by working beside them. It gets you away from a myotic way of thinking. One of my assignments took me to the DMZ. You come face-to-face with North Korea. You see them living in the past. They come out in these old woolen Soviet uniforms. It's very stark there. You sort of understand the dangers in the world.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, it got me. You look on a map, you can tell what the stakes are. There's nothing good coming from Russian aggression. And so that's what drew me into being involved, adding my voice and perspective to the mix.
In response to Roger's comments, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung sent the following statement to Business Insider: "President Trump dominated the primary in record-breaking fashion and it wasn't even close. Voters know that President Trump is the only person who will beat Joe Biden and take back the White House. It was revealed that investigators in that case likely engaged in evidence tampering and mishandling of those documents, which is why a filing was made earlier this week to dismiss the case. Joe Biden being elected again would be a disaster for America. President Trump will put America First instead of getting into more wars and more conflict like Biden has done." (Editor's note: Special counsel Jack Smith's team has said the order of documents taken from Mar-a-Lago during the classified documents probe may have shifted from when FBI agents originally seized the material.)