Sinners In the Hands of An Angry Trump

Nikki Haley Sells Her Soul For Nothing

To no one’s surprise, Nikki Haley bent the knee to Donald Trump today and endorsed him for President. Haley’s betrayal is painful, pointed, and shocking to millions.

Millions of Americans, mostly Republicans, saw Nikki Haley as a leader, a fighter, a voice speaking truth to Trump's unspeakable power.

She believes she just preserved her political viability for 2028. Nothing could be further from the truth. She’ll never, ever be acceptable to the MAGA base; once you run against Trump, you are anathema forever. Her decision to back Trump is, of course, a vile mixture of rank cowardice and raw ambition, but she’ll never, ever gain from it.

But allow me momentarily to praise Nikki Haley because now we know what she wanted all along. Words, famously, mean things. In today’s digital panopticon, Nikki Haley can’t retcon her statements, assertions, speeches, debates, and tweets. She can’t revise and extend her remarks.

There is only one conclusion: it was a scam from the start, and now she’s getting what she really wanted all along.

Nikki Haley wanted a president who would insult the men and women serving in our armed forces in danger around the world, including her husband.

Nikki Haley wanted a philanderer, an adulterer, and an adjudicated rapist as our President. She once said, “Donald Trump wants to be the presumptive Republican nominee, and we’re talking about $83 million in damages. We’re not talking about fixing the border. We’re not talking about tackling inflation. America can do better than Donald Trump…”

Nikki Haley wanted a man who refused for weeks in 2016 to disavow the KKK. Remember this? “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the K.K.K. That is not a part of our party. That is not who we are.”

Nikki Haley wanted a man she called mentally unfit to serve in any office, much less the Presidency of the United States.

Nikki Haley wanted a man in the Oval Office who would abandon Ukraine and throw America into the arms of Vladimir Putin, allowing the Russians to crush the Ukrainians and the expansive new Cold War across the rest of Europe.

Nikki Haley wanted an “unhinged” President who would stop any kind of meaningful border security legislation.

Nikki Haley wanted a president who would break NATO, turning it into a fuck-you-pay-me protection racket instead of an alliance that has held peace and security in Europe for 70 years. She also obviously wanted a man who tells the Russians to invade NATO-allied nations at will.

Nikki Haley wanted a president for sale to the highest bitter at home or abroad, a man so obviously transactional and utterly venal that even the lowest bidders on the world stage get to take control of American policy.

We’ve learned that Nikki Haley wanted a man who would attack her skin color, her family, her children, her accomplishments, her parents, and her community.

Nikki Haley, who knew precisely the type of man Trump was, having taken his racist views of her personally on board while she served as his United Nations, and she still wanted him in the end.

Nikki Haley is fine with supporting a man for President surrounded by a grubby claque of white supremacists, white nationalists, white boys, and purity-of-the-blood, neo-Nazi adjacent fans of white replacement theory.

After Charlottesville, Haley said, “…I will tell you that there is no room for hate in this country. I know the pain that hate can cause, and we need to isolate haters and we need to make sure that they know there is no place for them, because our country is founded on so much more than that.”

Apparently not.

In my friend Stuart Stevens's words, it was all a lie.

The confection of Nikki Haley’s campaign image disguised her real character just long enough to break the hearts of millions of Republican voters who reject Trump and Trumpism. It was a well-acted role, a con, a flim, a grift that broke the hearts of millions.

After eight years of watching my former friends, clients, and professional colleagues swallow their ethics, pride, judgment, and conservative principles for Trump, only to be paid back with worthless script in the MAGA company, the Republican party, its donors, and the consultant enablers never ceases to disappoint.

I long for the day when Donald Trump is imprisoned, defeated, and dead. It won’t end this pernicious cancer he is released into America’s body politic, but his unspeakable influence over Republican politicians who posture as principled conservatives but who in reality are mere enablers and sycophants will break at some point and to some degree.

Today’s Haley news reminded me of a line from Goethe: “The human race is a monotonous affair. Most people spend the greatest part of their time working in order to live, and what little freedom remains so fills them with fear that they seek out any and every means to be rid of it.”

Ultimately, they don’t want to be free of Trump’s power. They may hate it, but they fear freedom more than they hate servitude.

They don’t want to blaze an independent path forward. Every candidate who ran in the GOP primary in 2024 wasn’t running against Trump; they were running in hopes of some externality taking Trump out. They wanted to claim his grubby throne when he died or went to prison.

They all break. They all give in. They embrace their moral collapse.

To paraphrase colonial-era pastor Jonathan Edwards, they are sinners in the hands of an angry Trump. His rather inescapable essay “Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God” was something you read in high school or college literature.

Edwards describes sinners as being at the mercy of God, who can either save them or let them fall into damnation. Republican politicians dangle over the fiery doom of Trump's disapproval. His condemnation or approval can make or break their political careers.

"The devil stands ready to fall upon them, and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession, and under his dominion. The Scripture represents them as his goods. The devils watch them; they are ever by them at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey, and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back. If God should withdraw his hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls."

Nikki Haley chose her fate tonight, taking Donald Trump’s hand in an unholy political marriage. As clever as she thinks she is, I will remind her that every deal with the Devil ends the same way: in Hell, forever

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