You knew it was coming.

As soon as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley emerged as the main threat to Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination, it became inevitable that she would be targeted by him. Any front-runner would do the same thing. But Trump did it with his typical touch.

Last week Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a conspiracy theory that Haley, who was born in South Carolina, was not qualified to be president because her parents, born in India, were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes that any person born on American soil is a citizen of the United States and therefore can serve as president.

By Friday the former president of the United States was referring to Haley as “Nimbra.”

There are two things to know in order to understand what’s unfolding. The first is that Haley’s given name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has gone by Nikki since she was a child—a local newspaper referred to her as Nikki when she was 12 years old and she had a role in a production of Li’l Abner; and she dropped her maiden name when she married Michael Haley in 1996.

Non-paywall link

  • narcogen@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    He didn’t make them that way. He gave them permission to stop pretending it was a bad look to be that way openly.

    • agent_flounder@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Like, who writes these titles? Surely anyone aware of Nixon’s war on drugs targeting hippies and black people, or Reagan ignoring the AIDS crisis, or any number of other examples would’ve made it clear that Republicans have been this way for decades, really since the southern strategy was enacted.

      • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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        10 months ago

        Right, that’s what the southern strategy was.

        Get all the white voters on your side by stoking racial fears. Trump just realized that the racists are everywhere, and many of them were too dumb to understand the dog whistles enough to be motivated to vote. What some of the rest of us underestimated, was how little the rest of the conservatives would care.

    • thesprongler@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Exactly, and we’ll never get any real progress if we can’t pin the tail on the real elephant in the room.

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Trump didnt make the Republican Party Cruel, Xenophobic, Exclusionary, or bigoted.

    he just made it acceptable to let the those flag fly publicly.

  • Binthinkin@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    It was always that way don’t be stupid. Do you really think GWB’s conman party was not hostile to minorities? Back then they were just “one of the good ones.” They had more nuance with their prejudices and race conspiracies.

    Now the mask is off, that’s it.

  • deft@lemmy.wtf
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    10 months ago

    I hate this shit Trump literally did nothing but say the quiet parts out loud.

    • Isthisreddit@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      This headline is for republican’s in denial about their party to feel better about themselves. Those of us who have paid attention to conservatives knew for decades what they really were (I used to tell republicans for years this is what their party is, many used to laugh and handwave telling me I’m silly for thinking what this headline says)

  • lolcatnip@reddthat.com
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    10 months ago

    Anyone else remember when W tried to popularize the phrase “compassionate conservatism”? It’s an implicit admission that conservatism is inherently uncompassionate.

  • kromem@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    It’s literally the party that is made up in part by the racists who were upset enough about the Civil Rights Act that they switched parties.

    It’s been this way for a while.

  • andyburke@fedia.io
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    10 months ago

    The title is backwards: the cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary and bigoted GOP finds its embodiment in Donald Trump.

  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Donald Trump revealed to the Republican Party that they can be openly cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted instead of pretending they’re not.

  • PugJesus@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    The Party of Malice. Donald Trump has made the Republican Party open about being cruel, xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted

    FTFY

  • TigrisMorte@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    The Republican Party has been exclusively xenophobic, exclusionary, and bigoted for at least sixty years.