Nikki Haley Accuses Trump of Attempting to Influence Election with RNC Picks

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is accusing former President Donald Trump of trying to “take” the 2024 election by endorsing former adviser Michael Whatley, daughter-in-law Lara Trump, and his current campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita to take over top Republican National Committee posts.

“He has decided he has fired the RNC chair,” she said at an event this week in her hometown, Bamberg, South Carolina, reports NBC News. “He’s named who’s going to be the new RNC chair. His daughter-in-law will be the co-chair, and he is making his campaign manager the officer that runs the party … is that how you’re going to try and take an election?”

Trump on Monday endorsed Whatley as his choice to head the RNC, should current Chair Ronna McDaniel step down, with his daughter-in-law to co-chair the organization and LaCivita to be its chief operating officer.

At a separate event, Haley said with his endorsements, he is going to “try and continue to take the party so that it does what he wants it to do.”

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung, in response, told NBC News that “Nikki ‘Braindead Birdbrain’ Haley reeks of desperation as it’s clear she knows she has no shot, and is now auditioning for a cable news contract when her 15 minutes are over. But not before she can squeeze every last dollar out of her Democrat benefactors.”

Whatley is currently the North Carolina Republican Party chair and serves as general counsel for the RNC. He has served on Trump’s 2016 campaign and transition team.

Lara Trump is the wife of Trump’s son Eric Trump. She has assisted in her father-in-law’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, and commented on Newsmax on Tuesday that the RNC “needs to be the leanest, most lethal political fighting machine we’ve ever seen in American history.”

She also said that if she’s elected to the leadership role, “every single penny will go to the number one and the only job of the RNC — that is electing Donald J. Trump as president of the United States and saving this country.”

Several news outlets have been reporting that McDaniel may step down from her chairmanship, which she’s held since January 2017, after the South Carolina Republican primary on Feb. 24.