00:00:49.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:03:47.000The Koch Brother Network that is largely financed by Charles Koch and his deceased brother has a lot of money tied up in the politics stuff too.
00:03:57.000David Koch, who passed away a couple years ago, very generous man, gave a lot to hospitals and charities and concert halls, many other things.
00:04:05.000They've spent $34 million, I believe, is the final number, on the Nikki Haley primary campaign.
00:04:12.000I never want to hear a criticism of turning point actions, ballot chasing, get out the vote effort again.
00:04:19.000You know, you have Eric Erickson and these people go out and they say, oh, turning point is sucking up all the resources.
00:04:24.000Spare me the lecture when we have the Koch brothers that have now spent $34 million.
00:04:32.000Meanwhile, DeSantis spent $130 million all to get effectively zero delegates.
00:04:39.000So I just want to kind of put that out there because, you know, there's this media narrative: oh, you know, Turning Point is hiring all these ballot chasers.
00:04:45.000That money could be better spent elsewhere.
00:04:47.000First of all, no, it's the most important thing you could spend.
00:04:50.000Secondly, why does anyone criticize the Koch brothers for spending $34 million for what?
00:04:59.000Well, the Koch brothers have suspended their spending on Nikki Haley.
00:05:41.000This has been a project to essentially give Americans another choice if they're unhappy with the presumptive nominees, which, you know, it appears it's going to be Trump versus Biden right now.
00:05:52.000Nikki Haley, she's going to remain in the race.
00:05:57.000And hats off to her for staying in it and for sticking with it.
00:06:00.000But we're looking for great quality people, folks that have broad appeal to independents, Democrats, Republicans.
00:06:07.000And yeah, I mean, Nikki Haley is somebody we'd definitely be interested in.
00:06:12.000So what were the numbers on Saturday night?
00:06:14.000Donald Trump received the most votes of any candidate in the history of the South Carolina primary on the Republican side.
00:06:20.000Donald Trump won by more than 20 points in Nikki Haley's home state.
00:06:25.000Nikki Haley only did as well as she did, by the way, because of Democrat crossover, Koch brother money trying to get Democrats out to vote.
00:06:32.000Gavin Newsom went out on television and it's now said that she is one of the most effective spokespeople for the Biden campaign.
00:06:41.000Exit polls show that half of Nikki Haley voters were Democrats.
00:06:46.000So we need to understand here that this is a serious threat.
00:06:49.000It is easy to dismiss Nikki Haley in the Republican primary.
00:06:52.000She's not going to be the Republican nominee in Milwaukee.
00:06:56.000When the RNC happens this summer and the candidate officially accepts the party's nomination and it's ready, set, go, and it's a race to election day and ballot chasing and voter registration, all that stuff gets kicked into high gear.
00:07:11.000Nikki Haley will probably not even be given a speaking slot at the RNC convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
00:07:18.000Again, the unintended blessing here is that Nikki Haley was really being considered as a vice presidential contender about a month and a half ago, and that is dead.
00:07:28.000But what if Nikki Haley runs as no labels?
00:07:47.000Why can't we all get along and sing kumbaya while we pass amnesty, lower the corporate tax burden, deregulate the economy, some of those I actually support, while being indifferent to social and culture war issues, and we also need to give Ukraine unlimited amounts of money.
00:08:05.000That is effectively what no labels is.
00:09:13.000So if you were a neoliberal, you want to see all this money to Ukraine, you want to see the CIA remain very powerful, you want to see the FBI remain the sovereign over the country, wouldn't it make sense to draft and run Nikki Haley as a third party candidate?
00:09:31.000Nikki Haley is not necessarily at this point running to be the RNC nominee.
00:09:37.000In fact, I have some exclusive news to show you, and it's been reported, but I'm going to share some document sent to me of who is hosting her Dallas fundraisers.
00:09:47.000Her top fundraiser in Dallas is hosted by somebody who's good friends with Nancy Pelosi and Pete Buttigieg.
00:09:53.000That's who's hosting the fundraiser for Nikki Haley in Dallas.
00:12:44.000Secondly, you know what's unique about her candidacy is that she's not really running against Donald Trump.
00:12:51.000She's running, and she will give a little bit of a, you know, I was a poor Indian girl and picked on by the racists, or Donald Trump is too much drama, but she falls short of Chris Christie's type of criticism that he would level against Trump.
00:13:08.000Now, maybe it's because she knows that the party is largely sympathetic to Trump, or maybe it's because she wants to try to not be overly hated by center-right disenfranchised Republican voters, where she can run as a no-labels ticket.
00:13:26.000The line is always this: Nikki is going to be politically homeless.
00:13:31.000But now we see that it's likely that Nikki might have been playing for a third-party bid this entire time.
00:13:40.000Some people say, oh, she's on the Liz Cheney path, but maybe Nikki Haley is going to do the bidding of Liz Cheney, which is to try to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president.
00:13:52.000Nikki Haley is talking to moderates on purpose.
00:13:56.000She's communicating to independent voters on purpose.
00:14:00.000If you were Joe Biden or Uniparty Democrat donors who are donating to her campaign, you must be freaking out about the prospect of the Joe Biden candidacy.
00:14:32.000And very similarly, where we saw that Carrie Lake was offered money not to run, what if Nikki Haley was offered a very nice life if she runs as no labels Nikki?
00:14:47.000We're talking about board seats, book deals, consulting contracts.
00:14:52.000She can live the life of a multi-millionaire.
00:14:55.000All to try to take three, four, five, six, seven percent from Donald Trump.
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00:15:28.000It's for all Americans regardless of age.
00:15:30.000That's why I want to talk to you about the other organization, AMAC.
00:15:33.000Yes, they champion issues that are critical to the senior community, but their mission and impact go way beyond that, offering incredible benefits and opportunities for conservatives of every age.
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00:16:47.000I bet shortly after Super Tuesday, Ari, you encouraged me to lead on this opinion.
00:16:52.000I felt it, but you really crisply put that.
00:16:55.000Ari Fleischer, walk us through why you believe this.
00:16:58.000Well, I was just watching her speech, her concession speech to Donald Trump on Saturday night after the South Carolina primary.
00:17:04.000And when you listen to her words, when you see her comfort in attacking Donald Trump, her comfort in attacking Joe Biden, married to her statement, I'm a woman of my word.
00:17:17.000It led me to believe she's going to try to create that zone, that get the election through the center.
00:17:24.000Now, I've got to say, Charlie, since I said that, and I said it live on Fox News that night, and I've said it on Twitter, I'm getting a lot of pushback from the Haley campaign saying that's not the case.
00:17:35.000She's not going to do that, that she's a Republican, she's going to stay a Republican.
00:18:48.000Now, people would argue that he hurt Clinton and Bush equally.
00:18:51.000She certainly didn't win any electoral votes, but 2024 is just shaping up differently, Charlie.
00:18:56.000It is a fair statement, even if you love Donald Trump, it is a fair statement that a lot of America doesn't want either Trump or Biden on the ballot.
00:19:05.000Does that create for the first time in a century a zone up the middle for somebody to take advantage of?
00:19:11.000And could that somebody be Nikki Haley, who did in North Carolina, for example, win independent voters by 19 percentage points?
00:19:18.000Does this create a, I don't want Trump, I don't want Biden, I want somebody else.
00:19:24.000That remains to be tested, but we're never going to know if somebody doesn't step into that void.
00:19:30.000And if you're the candidate who thinks you can create that candidacy down the middle this time, you won't know until you actually get in the ring and try.
00:19:38.000And then I don't think you're even going to know until October whether it has any prospect of being successful.
00:19:43.000What I do know is this cycle is different because both candidates are widely unpopular with the broader electorate.
00:19:51.000And that's what took me to Nikki Haley.
00:19:53.000And I don't say that advocating for it.
00:19:56.000I'm saying it as an analyst, when I watch politics and I see what's going on, watched her speech, it sure sounded like it.
00:20:17.000The other thing is, I mean, let's pretend Nikki is telling the truth and her camp says we're not doing this.
00:20:23.000Does she really think she's going to be the nominee?
00:20:25.000Does she think that is she running as an insurance package that Donald Trump might have such lawfare difficulties ahead of the convention that all of a sudden the party's going to say, let's now nominate Nikki Haley?
00:20:40.000I think her team is very realistic about her prospect of winning a Republican nomination.
00:20:44.000I think they look at it and they know how to count delegates.
00:20:47.000They know what states are possible states for Super Tuesday.
00:20:50.000I think they're very realistic about her chances of winning now.
00:20:54.000I think what's keeping Nikki in there from a personal point of view, being the candidate with skin in the game, is I think she just genuinely believes she owes it to the country that if Donald Trump is going to lose in November, Republicans need a second choice.
00:21:58.000And so she, and she's not overly ideological.
00:22:01.000And I mean this, like RFK, for example, really deeply believes, and I think Nikki Haley's deep beliefs, but RFK will happily run for an office to try to win an argument.
00:23:29.000Second, she's lingering because she really does in her heart believe that Trump can't win.
00:23:35.000So somebody needs to save the Republic from Joe Biden.
00:23:39.000And the third is no labels, that she can win if she runs, makes that decision to run an independent candidacy down the middle because she's gambling on Trump and Biden both being so unpopular.
00:23:52.000All of those three are guided by pragmatism.
00:23:55.000These are not, she's not the RFK candidate that you say is running the argument.
00:24:39.000She was the United Nations ambassador.
00:24:41.000I'd be shocked if he would make her the vice presidential nominee alongside of him, because after everything she's done and said, even though people are quick to forgive in politics, I don't think Donald Trump wants a vice president who he's got to look over his shoulder for.
00:24:56.000So I think Trump's going to pick a loyalist for vice presidential candidate.
00:25:00.000So I don't think there's anything Donald Trump can offer her.
00:25:02.000And I don't think there's anything she wants.
00:25:04.000I think if I had to guess, her real motivation is either number two or number three.
00:25:10.000She really does think the party will benefit from having an insurance policy just in case people come to the conclusion Trump can't win or she'll go no labels.
00:25:18.000And given the pushback I'm getting from her people about no labels, I just let others decide.
00:25:27.000So, Ari, not necessarily shifting gears, but on the same kind of genre about heading into November 2024, just from a objective kind of how historians will, actual historians, not these crazy historians now, will look at the last year.
00:25:41.000What do you make of Donald Trump's ability to consolidate support in the Republican primary, given the indictments, given the law fare?
00:26:27.000It is wonderful that the Republican economy is expanding into blue-collar areas, into lower-income areas, increasingly with black and Hispanic communities.
00:27:04.000We're heading into a cycle, Charlie, in which a lot of Democrats who can't stand Biden will vote for Biden because they can't stand Trump.
00:27:11.000There are a lot of Republicans or used to be Republicans who can't stand Trump, but they can't stand Biden even worse or countenance the idea of an 85-year-old president.
00:27:22.000That's the type of cycle we're heading into where you've got the Trump base, but then the group he needs to get over the middle is going to be an anti-Biden group, not a pro-Trump group.
00:27:32.000By the way, it factors into why Nikki Haley as no labels would be a threat to Trump because she appeals almost exclusively to college-educated voters.
00:27:44.000And college-educated suburban voters like Nikki a lot.
00:29:14.000And for every positive we've seen of winning working class, blue-collar, Hispanic, and black voters, we're struggling with college-educated suburban voters.
00:29:46.000Let's just not, let's not look too far in the distance.
00:29:49.000From now to November, what can change that?
00:29:52.000I think the most important thing to change that is for President Trump to learn one of the lessons of his first term.
00:29:57.000When he counter punches as hard as he does sometimes, he ends up hitting himself.
00:30:04.000If President Trump could make the case, make the fight, but do so in a tough, strident way he does, that's his personality, but not go too far.
00:31:46.000Well, first, the reasons people vote are based on policy and personality.
00:31:51.000If your view is policy, you can be won over.
00:31:53.000If your view is on personality, you can't.
00:31:55.000He just said the person's not qualified.
00:31:57.000And this is where President Trump has pushed too many people out of the Republican Party because he can go too far.
00:32:03.000On policy, he can win a lot of people back.
00:32:07.000As for the vice presidency, Charlie, no one will make a difference.
00:32:12.000It doesn't matter who Joe Biden's vice president is.
00:32:15.000I guess it kind of does because he's so old, it does become relevant.
00:32:19.000We should all fear if Kamala Harris becomes president.
00:32:21.000But history shows that the thing about a vice presidency is people will vote against you if you pick the wrong vice president, Sarah Palin for John McCain, for example.
00:32:32.000There is no history and there hasn't been for probably half a century of the vice presidential candidate delivering votes to the president.
00:32:40.000In the modern communications era, where people hear the messages of the president across the country, it's no longer regional.
00:32:47.000There's no longer void of communications the way there was in the early part of the 20th century where there was just radio and newspaper.
00:32:55.000People now vote based on who the president is.
00:32:58.000This is going to be a vote for or against Biden, for or against Trump.
00:33:02.000As many people as there are who I like who could become really good vice presidential nominees, and I think Elise Stefanik is the most likely, congresswoman from New York State.
00:33:11.000She's not going to deliver any votes to Donald Trump.