GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is out with a new campaign video that should send chills down the spines of anyone worried about Vice President Kamala Harris ascending to the presidency.
Taking on the possibility that octogenarian President Joe Biden may not be able to serve out a second term, Haley says, “President Kamala Harris? No thank you.”
“While there are serious questions about President Biden’s mental competence, there are even more questions about Vice President Harris’ actual competence,” the Haley campaign asserts in a press release. “As the so-called border czar, Harris oversaw an unprecedented border crisis that continues to worsen. She has embarrassed herself and the country on the international stage and is now the subject of a desperate political makeover.”
The Republican presidential contender’s campaign is referring to recent stories on the efforts of top White House officials to “shore up her underwhelming poll numbers” ahead of 2024. While Biden and Harris have consistently been underwater in the polls, Harris’ general upper 30s approval rating is even worse than the president’s.
“There’s zero chance Biden will replace her on the ticket — doing so would be an admission that he botched the most important decision he made as a candidate,” Axios recently reported. “So the White House and campaign team are working to give Harris a boost — which her allies feel is long overdue.”
Haley has made age and mental competency a top talking point on the campaign trail. The former South Carolina governor has called for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75 — including Biden and Republican Party presidential frontrunner, former President Donald Trump.
Haley, 51, isn’t the only one questioning the mental acuity of the 80-year-old president as the liberal gaffe machine stumbles his way through his first term. She also has been raising the mortality question, saying Biden is likely to die within the next five years, particularly given the rigors of the job.
Harris would be waiting in the wings.
“If you vote for Joe Biden, you really are counting on a President Harris,” Haley says in a Fox News clip featured in her new campaign video.
There are real questions about Joe Biden's mental competence and even more questions about Kamala Harris' *actual* competence. pic.twitter.com/Rjgn2fJcoX
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) May 3, 2023
The video includes multiple clips of news anchors and commentators discussing the ineptitude of the vice president and plenty showing it.
“We’ve been to the border,” Harris said in an infamous interview with NBC Nightly News’ Lester Holt. “You haven’t been to the border,” Holt reminded the vice president. “And I haven’t been to Europe,” she awkwardly responded.
Harris bashing has become a bipartisan affair so much so that it has raised concerns about Democrats’ chances in 2024.
Multiple Democratic Party leaders told CNN in early March that if people don’t start feeling more positive about the next person in the line of succession, they might turn away from the ticket entirely. They’re urging allies to stop the Harris pile-on, if only for Biden’s sake – or for Democrats’ sake, or the party’s future, the news outlet reported.
“People who are denigrating her are aggrandizing themselves,” Illinois liberal Gov. J.B. Pritzker told CNN.
“Right now, she seems to be an albatross,” fretted one state Democratic Party chair who is concerned about Harris’ poll numbers and about Biden’s reelection chances. “She’s either going to be a liability or a help. And you better embrace her because it’s not like she’s going to be off the ticket.”
Haley is trying to drive home the point that Biden is a liability to the nation, a liability that would only be made worse by his vice president succeeding him.
“Are we willing to say we’re okay with a President Kamala Harris? Is that what we’re looking at? Because that’s the reason we’ve got a country to save, and that’s the reason we can’t have that happen,” Haley says, putting an exclamation point on the end of her campaign video.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
