:format(jpeg):focal(714x37:724x27)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/gfrmedia/N7B6WKR26NCBBD34GJVXPGG27M.jpg "Donald Trump mocks Nikki Haley’s first name")
Former President Donald Trump Mocks Nikki Haley’s Name on Social Media
Atlanta — Donald Trump used his social media platform on Friday to mock Nikki Haley’s first name, in a new example of how the former president focuses on race and ethnicity to attack people of color, especially his rivals in politics.
In a post on his Truth Social account, Trump repeatedly referred to Haley, the daughter of migrants from India, as “Nimbra.” Haley, former governor of South Carolina, was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, as Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has always used her middle name, “Nikki.” She adopted the last name “Haley” when she married in 1996.
Trump called Haley “Nimbra” three times in the post and said she “does not have the character necessary to succeed.”
The attack comes four days before the New Hampshire primary, in which Haley is trying to establish herself as the only viable alternative to Trump in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Trump’s post was an escalation of recent attacks in which he referenced Haley’s first name — although he misspelled it, “Nimrada” — and falsely claimed that she is ineligible for the presidency because her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time she was born in 1972.
His remarks evoke the rhetoric about Barack Obama’s birthplace that Trump used to attack the former president. Trump spent years pushing the conspiracy theory that the first black president of the United States was born in Kenya and was not a “natural-born” American citizen, as the Constitution requires. Those claims were part of Trump’s rise among the Republicans’ more culturally conservative base before his election in 2016, which surprised much of the American political class.
Haley has downplayed Trump’s latest attacks as evidence that she is threatening her bid for a third consecutive nomination.
“I’ll let people decide what they mean by their attacks,” Haley told reporters in New Hampshire on Friday when asked about Trump’s false claims that her ancestry disqualifies her from the Oval Office. “Look, what we know is that he’s clearly insecure if he throws these tantrums, if he’s spending millions of dollars on television. He is insecure, he knows something is wrong.”
Trump’s campaign team did not immediately respond to a query about his comments.