The funniest headline I have read this week, but it's early. From the Daily Beast:
Inside the Trump Campaign’s Plan to Take Down Nikki Haley
There's a "plan" needed for this? Also inherent in the Beast's scoop is the vast unlikelihood that a Trump campaign could formulate a coherent plan, let alone execute one. Fortunate for Trump, however, is that a plan would be superfluous.
Nevertheless, "Trump’s campaign appears eager to slam Haley," write the publication's Jake Lahut and Zachary Petrizzo. The former president's attack dogs "see Haley as a weak candidate offering the former president a chance to settle a score, as well as an opportunity to experiment with new tactics." Score-settling being Trump's cardinal activity most days, his approach to defaming Haley will be but a replay of his preceding 75 years. (He was a precocious maligner.)
It seems there are two schools of thought emanating from Trump's wartime consiglieri. The first is what one might call The Sonny Corleone Approach: "a chance to bury Haley early and often, using her campaign like a crash test dummy to demonstrate Trump’s dominance for anyone else willing to step in."
Like Sonny himself, this particular strategy would be stupendously dimwitted. For Trump to emerge as the GOP crime family's surviving mobster, he must divide and conquer. Haley is polling at around 3%, which is probably her high point. But her single digit of voter preference would, at any rate, subtract from all other anti-Trump preferences.
In brief, for Trump, the more competitors the better, as each contributes to the fragmentation of the non-Trump vote. He should welcome Haley's entrance into the race and that of every other starry-eyed Republican who envisions himself dictating moral imperatives from the White House.
This, of course, is School of Thought #2. But knowing Trump, as we unfortunately do, he'll find over-the-top slander of Haley et al. irresistible.
"They’ll definitely have a nickname for her," said one source close to Trump. "He had a nickname for every one of his opponents in 2016, so that tactic—while some of his tactics have proven to be ineffective or people have learned to deal with him—the naming works." Might I suggest Nincompoop Nikki? As a former hatcheteer for the Donald, she performed well. But for any higher office, the nickname and its possessor harbor the alliterative merit of truth.
Trump's staffers see him "depicting Haley as 'disloyal,' 'a flip-flopper,' a war 'hawk,' and backed by Wall Street. Another ... is the allegation that Haley’s donors 'have ties to China.'" The decided virtue of the first three attacks, at least, is that they're all true, which is an uncommon element in any Trumpy verbal assault.
The wiser course for Ms. Haley? "Multiple sources close to Trump also raised the prospect of [her] run being an audition for a Trump vice presidential slot." Yet the wisest course for Ms. Haley would be to audition as Ron DeSantis' veep. Him, Trump will have a much harder time taking down.