Trump turns his ire on Haley, with barrage of policy, personal and conspiratorial shots

PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire — Donald Trump is moving aggressively to finish off Nikki Haley.

And he’s taking a two-pronged approach to doing it: Going after his former U.N. ambassador on policy in public remarks while launching personal, conspiratorial broadsides against her online.

On Wednesday evening, the former president repeatedly assailed Haley, who has staked her campaign on a strong showing in the Granite State, accusing her of endangering entitlement programs, being in the pocket of donors and acting as a stalking horse for Democrats.

“As you’ve probably heard, Nikki Haley is counting on Democrats and liberals to infiltrate your Republican Primary to put her over the top in this state — which is no surprise, since her campaign is funded by Democrats,” Trump said. “If Haley wins, Biden wins.”

He insisted he only only picked her as U.N. ambassador to elevate his ally, Henry McMaster, to the South Carolina governorship by getting Haley out of that post. Haley, he added, would be “killed” by Biden in a general election matchup.

Online — in true Trump fashion — the attacks have been delivered in more strikingly personal terms.

In a Truth Social post, Trump promoted a false conspiracy theory that Haley is ineligible to run for office because her parents, immigrants from India, were not U.S. citizens when she was born. Trump posted a meme comparing Haley to Hillary Clinton. And in another post he referred to her by her first name, Nimarata, although he misspelled it as Nimrada. Haley’s was named Nimarata, but she goes by Nikki instead, and took her husband’s last name, Haley.

The attacks seem designed to reach two very different types of Republican audiences. But their goal is the same: Sinking Haley in next week’s New