As former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has slowly risen in the 2024 GOP primary polls, so too has she gradually become a target for the right-wing media allies of former President Donald Trump. Though she is likely not within striking distance of taking the lead — recent polls in New Hampshire have her well behind in the state’s January 23 primary — media supporters of the former president are building on their campaign of singling out Haley as a GOP establishment shill, or even a Democratic “Trojan horse.” 

One influential conservative commentator is also doubling down on pointedly using Haley’s first name, a racist dog whistle recently embraced by Trump himself.

After Trump’s predictably dominant victory in the Iowa GOP caucuses on January 15, pro-Trump media demanded that everyone else drop out, Haley included. On X (formerly known as Twitter), Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk mocked her and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for failing to “shock the world” and wasting a combined $250 million on the “charade” of a primary. Conservative podcasters the Hodgetwins similarly called on Haley and DeSantis to “drop out now and rally around Trump just like Vivek [Ramaswamy] is doing.”

“If they don’t, their careers are done,” they wrote. “Focus on beating the Uniparty and not being a part of it.” 

Haley has also come under fire as an establishment tool, with Fox host Laura Ingraham warning that for every day she is “beating the old establishment horse or criticizing Trump, she’s just further destroying her chances of being an influential voice in Republican politics in the future.” 

Above a chyron warning that “the donor class won’t save Nikki Haley’s campaign,” Ingraham advised that if Haley “dropped out today, if she came to terms with the fact that the GOP is a populist party, if she started vigorously campaigning for Trump, she could, perhaps, rebuild some of the trust that she’s lost among the GOP base.”

The day after the Iowa caucuses, Newsmax host Eric Bolling needled New Hampshire governor and Haley supporter Chris Sununu over Haley getting “smoked,” adding that he’s “never seen someone so happy to come in third place before.”

“This is not your father’s Republican Party anymore,” Bolling told Sununu, the son of former New Hampshire governor and former White House chief of staff John Sununu. “This is a populist party. Trump is proving this is a populist party. No offense, you guys, you old school establishment Republicans — [Chris] Christie, you; friends of mine. Christie’s a friend of mine. Nikki Haley — your time’s passed.” Much of this tense conversation transpired above a chyron declaring that “Nikki Haley represents the elite donor class.” 

As the Newsmax chyron suggested, another target on Haley’s back is her apparent subservience to donors. That same day after the Iowa caucuses, Fox host Mark Levin told his radio listeners that “Haley is the great ruling class hope within the Republican Party, Democrat and Republican.”

Riffing on Haley’s third place finish, Levin said that “they threw Democrats behind her. Independents behind her. Massive amounts of money behind her. The free media on all the networks, they were behind Haley. … And she couldn't take second place.” 

Levin later alleged that “the fix is in” for Haley to “do well” in the New Hampshire primary:

On Newsmax, The Right Squad host Chris Plante similarly claimed that “Nikki Haley has become the Democrat Party’s Trojan horse” to undermine Trump’s presumed nomination. 

“Her only real path to victory, if there is one in New Hampshire next week, would be with the help of Democrat and independent voters, since there is no real Democratic primary next week,” he argued. “ Democrat voters can actually switch their party affiliation to vote for Nikki Haley, independents can vote for whichever party they choose.” 

Plante then played an MSNBC clip of an independent New Hampshire voter saying she would vote for Haley to “slow Trump’s momentum.” The Newsmax host added that “hate is a very powerful emotion, isn’t it?” 

On Infowars, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones also pushed the notion that “Democrats are all crossing over to support her,” before expressing his surprise that Haley, a well-known Indian American, is “supposedly brown.”

“They’re saying anybody that doesn’t vote for her is a racist. I didn’t know she was supposedly brown. But now she’s brown,” he said, “I thought she was the Republican version of Hillary Clinton.”

Jones is not the only Trump media ally to push racist commentary about Haley. On The Charlie Kirk Show, Kirk has continued to periodically call Haley by her first name, Nimarata, instead of her middle name, Nikki, which her campaign says she has used since birth. It is an unambiguously racist dog whistle which Kirk recently defended by claiming that “she changed to be Nikki.”

Discussing it with former Trump official Kash Patel — potentially the “most based Indian in the conservative movement,” according to Kirk — the TPUSA co-founder claimed that “of all of the objections I have of Nimarata Haley, not even one that would cross my mind is the Indian heritage.” 

Kirk said that “I call her Nimarata because that’s her name. I just think it’s funny because it drives her nuts when you say that.” Suggesting that his obsession is not racist because he doesn’t call former candidate Vivek Ramaswamy “Vince,” Kirk then congratulated Ramaswamy for having “owned it,” dishonestly suggesting Haley is using a fake name.

“It's not like Vivek started the run for the caucus and he said call me Vince. OK? He owned it. God bless him. Alright? Her name's Nimarata and she changed to be Nikki, and I don't like it. OK?” 

Cable news figures “act as if that we have this, like, pent-up bigotry or hatred, and it’s actually the opposite,” Kirk protested, before seeming to confuse the two Trump allies for each other. “If you bring Kash or you bring Vivek to some of the whitest counties in Iowa, you’ll get standing ovations at those Lincoln GOP dinners, right, Vi — right, Kash?” 

Patel smiled, and Kirk kept talking.