Joy Reid attacks Nikki Haley following 2024 announcement
MSNBC's Joy Reid attacked Nikki Haley following the announcement of her 2024 presidential bid, claiming the former South Carolina governor was trying to fit in by converting from Sikh to Christianity.
CNN, ABC, MSNBC and more flipped out over former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley's announcement of her 2024 presidential bid as they claimed that the former South Carolina governor was just a "token" presidential candidate who had "lost her mind."
Wajahat Ali, a columnist for the Daily Beast, launched a racially charged attack against Haley on Twitter.
"In the 2023 Racial Draft, I, on behalf of all self-respecting South Asians, hereby announce we are cutting Nikki Nimrata Haley from our team. We advise you not to pick her up off waivers. Oops! Too late. GOP scoops up another token. Well, we warned you. Good luck!" he wrote.
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Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations, speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition's Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19, 2022. (Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
While discussing Haley's announcement on Tuesday, MSNBC's Joy Reid claimed Haley was just trying to "fit in" by converting to Christianity and not focusing on her Sikh background.
"And she's had this sort of — she talks about her Indian American heritage, but she focuses not on her Sikh background, but on her conversion to Christianity. She’s definitely trying to fit in," Reid said.
Reid also insisted Haley was not responsible for bringing down the Confederate flag in South Carolina and lamented the fact that Haley didn't include it in her 2024 announcement.
"She wants the credit for the Charleston, South Carolina, massacre piece, but she has to walk in the line of you’re in the DeSantis party where they detest Black history, where they push away the history of anyone who isn’t White. So she’s got to run as a defender of the Confederate flag, a defender of the Confederacy, which is what she was before as well," Reid claimed.
TRUMP RAMPS ATTACKS ON ‘OVERLY AMBITIOUS’ HALEY AND OTHER POTENTIAL GOP RIVALS
"The View" host Whoopi Goldberg speaks on Jan. 30, 2023. (Screenshot/ABC/TheView)
ABC's "The View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg slammed Haley for "just finding out" that America isn't perfect and said Haley lost her mind.
"So Nikki, you know, since you have been asleep all this time, and you just woke up, you're just finding out that there are things about our country that are not perfect," Goldberg said, appearing upset. "And for us to pretend that it is and that nothing happened is ridiculous. So you're not saying anything new."
Goldberg concluded: "And you of all people should know better because you used to actually have some sanity and knew right from wrong. And then you lost your mind and went in some new direction. So don't do that."
Other hosts of "The View" also panicked over Haley's announcement, as Joy Behar accused her of being an "election denier" before correcting herself.
Fellow co-host Sunny Hostin called Haley a "political grifter" and a "chameleon" during Tuesday's show, after previously accusing the Republican of going by "Nikki" to hide her Indian heritage.
In September 2022, Hostin called Haley a "chameleon" and said "there are some of us that can be chameleons and decide not to embrace our ethnicities, so that we can pass …"
Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations, speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition's Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas on Nov. 19, 2022. (Ronda Churchill/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Hostin herself goes by Sunny instead of her real name, Asunción Cummings Hostin.
Politico's "The Recast" took aim at Haley on Tuesday as well for what it called her "complicated racial dance."
Politico tweeted the contents of the article and one of the tweets in the thread included a context warning about why Haley "listed her race as ‘white’ on her voter registration card."
"The only thing more fraught than her relationship with Trump is the one she has with race," Politco wrote after outlining Haley's ups and downs with former President Donald Trump.
NIKKI HALEY ENDORSED BY TOP TRUMP ALLY RALPH NORMAN WHO SAYS GOP NEEDS ‘NEW LEADERSHIP’
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley speaks during a press briefing at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
While previewing Haley's first campaign appearance in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday, CNN's David Chalian said the 51-year-old former governor was likely to make a "generational argument" and say that it is time for a new generation of leadership, both in the context of the Republican Party and with regard to President Biden.
"She is going to offer red meat to the Republican base primary voter, talking about things like America is not racist and we have to get back to our foundational values, the kinds of things that excite the base to hear. But she is going to broaden the appeal of the Republican brand. By talking about her story of child of immigrants, a woman of color. She’s going to try to expand sort of the very image of the Republican Party in her speech as well," he continued.
Others took to Twitter to accuse Haley of not going by her real name, Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, because "it's too brown-person-sounding."
Twitter placed a content warning on the tweet with a link to a USA Today fact check that declared the claim to be "false."
"'Nikki' is a traditional Punjabi name. It appears on Haley's birth certificate as her middle name, and she has gone by 'Nikki since birth," the context warning read.
Former ambassador to the U.N. and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced her bid for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election. (Screenshot/Nikki Haley For President/Reuters)
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Haley responded to Goldberg's attack on Twitter and said she was making "liberals' heads explode."
'Here we go again with Whoopi. The thought of me running for President makes the liberals’ heads explode. I wonder why? #AmericaIsNotARacistCountry," she said.
Fox News Digital's Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.