Evan Vucci/AP
- Donald Trump claimed Nikki Haley was "eviscerated" by the GOP base after she criticized him.
- Following the Capitol riot, Haley said Trump had "fallen so far" and would no longer "be in the picture."
- Trump told reporter David Drucker that he refused to meet with Haley after she publicly condemned him.
Former President Donald Trump appeared to take pleasure in insisting that Nikki Haley, who served as his ambassador to the UN, isn't popular with the Republican Party's most loyal voters, according to a new book by Washington Examiner reporter David Drucker.
Trump told Drucker in a May 2021 interview that his supporters have turned on Haley, one of many 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls, after she publicly condemned Trump's role in the January 6 Capitol riot.
"I'm not that surprised with her … Because just, her reputation," Trump told Drucker, according to "In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP." "She was just eviscerated by the base."
Trump added that he refused Haley's request to meet with him one-on-one at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, in February 2021.
"She wanted to come and get together," he said. "I turned it down."
Drucker wrote that Trump "seemed amused," rather than angry, about Haley's about-face.
"Every time she criticizes me, she uncriticizes me about 15 minutes later," Trump previously said of Haley in a September interview with Vanity Fair, adding, "I guess she gets the base."
After calling Trump a liar and endorsing Sen. Marco Rubio during the 2016 GOP primary, Haley served in the Trump administration for nearly two years and consistently championed Trump's leadership during and following her time in office.
She even defended his false claims that the 2020 election was "rigged" and "stolen" by Democrats last year, despite not believing such claims herself.
In December 2020, Haley told Politico's Tim Alberta that Trump "genuinely, to his core ... believes he was wronged" in the election and insisted the then-president wasn't being "deceptive" by lying about the election outcome. She insisted it wasn't dangerous for the president to spread false claims about the election.
But after the deadly Capitol attack, Haley told Alberta she was "deeply disturbed by what's happened to him" and issued a statement condemning Trump's praise for the rioters. She declared that Trump's political career was over and that he wouldn't ever run for federal office again.
"I don't think he's going to be in the picture," she said. "I don't think he can. He's fallen so far."
But in the months since the Capitol riot, Haley has again reversed her position on Trump, saying she would consult with Trump before deciding whether to launch a 2024 presidential campaign and telling The Wall Street Journal this month that she's glad Trump has remained influential and active in the GOP.
"He has the ability to move the ball, and I hope that he continues to do that," she said. "We need him in the Republican Party. I don't want us to go back to the days before Trump."
Haley, Drucker writes, has been laying the groundwork and building up the infrastructure for a potential 2024 bid through her group Stand for America and its accompanying political action committee.
In 2020 and 2021, she's made the rounds with appearances at the Iowa Republican Party's Lincoln Dinner in June and a speech at the Reagan Presidential Library, in addition to campaigning for down-ballot Republicans.