DON JONES INDEX…
	GAINS POSTED in GREEN LOSSES POSTED in RED
	2/19/21… 13,841.94 2/12/21… 13,833.35 6/27/13… 15,000.00

DOW JONES INDEX: 2/19/21…31,493.34; 2/12/21…31,458.40; 6/27/13…15,000.00)

LESSON for February 19, 2021 – “DON’T LOOK NOW, BUT…!”

Last Tuesday, we declared this…

SPECIAL UPDATE: TRUMP ACQUITTED, 53-47

So, Don Jones reckoned, no more mob incitements. No more vax bungling, tax cuts for the rich and a barrage of twees. Right?

Don’t look now, but…

He’s ba-a-a-ack.

And so is his insufferable family (with the exception of Erik, still in the doghouse with his binkie).

For the liberals, there is some good news. Rudy G. is not back. He’s fired, and it would seem that former President Trump has stiffed him on his fees. Crossover counselor Alan Dershowitz appears to have tiptoed away from the debacle. The second wave of five, led by Butch Boy-somebody… also gone. No indication yet whether the Cosby and Epstein lawyers and rocket-to-renown former ambulance chaser Michael Van der Veen who “triumphed” at Peach Two (see below) will be at the disgraced politician’s side should the swelling pimple of investigations burst into actual criminal charges, just like Mitch McConnell dog-whistled prosecutors to do.

Aside from the Capitol riots… where militia stalwarts and goofballs right to really right are ratting out Djonald like button men in the Valachi case… there are Trump’s tax problems in New York. These may sound trivial but, remember, it was the IRS (not the FBI) which eventually brought down Al Capone.

And the new covfefe might be even worse. Allegedly, the vengeful President yanked Space Force headquarters from unfriendly and Mexican-infested California to Colorado, where Republican Senator Cory Gardner was engaged in a tight re-election rate. But after the ballot counting was done and Gardner had lost, a peevish POTUS cancelled the deal and, once again, moved the flyboys cross-country to Alabama and friendly turf chaperoned by a friendly face, ex-football coach Tommy Tuberville.

There’s some justification: Huntsville, in the north of the state, is an aerospace hotspot so the relocation isn’t wholly irrational, but businesspeople (not to mention ordinary Joneses) are less anxious about local employers with critical Federal contracts being black-handed into picking up and moving out on the whim of a whimsical President.

So Donald Trump has his troubles with American justice, but his American cheering squad apparently doesn’t have troubles with Trump.

This future reality was driven home by the Morning Consult/Politico polling done over Valentines’ Day Weekend.

“If the 2024 Republican presidential primary were held today, Donald Trump would be the clear favorite to win big,” was the concurrence of the left-wing British Guardian UK. “That was the message from PMC’s study released on Tuesday, (See Attachment One, see this for charts and graphs) three days after Trump’s acquittal in his second impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January.”

We began this week (prior to the special announcement/spoiler of acquittal) on Lincoln’s Birthday where the House Managers and Trump’s newly emergent Philadelphia lawyers took down the House Managers in what could have been called an upset, given their blunderings, or not… given the Republicans’ will to keep their oaths to Trump.

Impeached, but acquitted… acquitted but hardly exonerated, the ex-President was left brooding in his Mar-a-Lago mansion, cut off from the world and Twitter. He reportedly roamed the halls by day and night, cursing the treacherous Republicans (Pence and Mitchy above all) and pondering his next move…

He could go back into business and start a MAGA cable news empire, or print or online newspaper… or something… and write, or speak or post whatever he pleased, wherever he pleased. (With former Fox friends unfriended, loyalists like Rush Limbaugh (dead) or Ted Cruz (Cancun-celled) no longer available, there would probably be a lot of job opportunities for little-known MAGAnoids, QAnonsters and outright Nazis to start climbing the ladder to success… or something…

He could retire grandiosely from politics as a participant and work behind the scenes to advance the career of Don Junior (whom the pollsters and the people, if not the liberal press) consider a viable and worthwhile (and young!) successor to Daddy. There has even been some talk circulating about Ivanka. Not Jared, too Jewish. Not Erik, too goofy. And Bible-believing prophet Jeff Jansen, from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, has pitched the prophecy of a Trump dynasty. “The last Trump will be Barron,” Jansen said. “He is going to be one of the greatest presidents of the United States.” (See more as Attachment Eight)

He could… if the three or more prospective prosecutions gather weight and heft… ditch Melania and fly off to Russia and seek sanctuary in the arms of Vladimir Putin. (He would not be able to corrupt Air Force One, but has the resources to unwillingly mask up, go to an airport and endure the body search, and take off… business class… to Moscow via, as ever, Frankfurt, Germany. He could gorge himself on all the complimentary salty snacks and, once he arrives, might even be allowed to rent a room in Putin’s Black Sea mansion where he would enjoy unlimited bowls of borscht and the affection of giddy Russian teenagers.

He could commit suicide. Solved Jeffrey Epstein’s problems.

But now, bolstered by the polls, he could be plotting his own resurrection and triumphant return. Mocked by liberals as an idiot… but never an idiotic idiot, to paraphrase Charlie Manson… he has already set to work as a good party animal by offering aid and comfort to Republican Senatorial and Congressional hopefuls in 2022. This is not only designed to win friends and influence people, he’ll need to take back the majorities in both houses to manage America the way he wants to. The little problem with poll numbers in purple and even light pink states… that can be managed, eventually. (Hint to Djonald: get a dog, preferably from a rescue shelter. The good ol’ boys among your base have an issue with manly men who don’t like dogs. And if you get a Doberman or Shepherd (not a pit bull, too “ethnic”), you can train it to attack and bite if Anderson Cooper should knock on the door.

After all, who’s gonna stop him from snapping up the Republican nomination (besides, of course, his own age and predilection for making outlandish statements that might suck even more air out of the G.O.P. tires?

Back in December, when Djonald Unelected was presumed entombed, the Axios/Survey Monkey folks did a pre-Christmas Trumpless poll that found…

· A full 40 percent of Republicans today would vote for Vice President Mike Pence as Commander-in-Chief.

· Nearly three in 10 (29 percent) would be keen on Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr.

· Just over one quarter (26 percent) would cast a vote for former U.N. Ambassador, Nikki Haley.

Don Junior’s sister Ivanka ran a strong fourth.

The remainder of the field included a gaggle of gobblers including such Governors as Greg Abbott of Texas (whose political future is now in question by the likelihood of power-outaging, road-icing, refinery-closing, child-freezing weather going away in hours, days or weeks), Ron deSantis of Florida and Larry Hogan of Maryland; Florida Senators Rick Scott and “Little” Marco Rubio, Scott n’ Cotton from South Carolina and Arkansas; Ben Sasse of Nebraska (and a traitor) and Josh Hawley of Missouri (a maniac). Liz Cheney, another traitor, might be seeking to step up from the House, along with New York’s Elise Stefanik. And then there are the head-scratchers… former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo polls ahead of Abbott and just behind Little Marco.

Morning Consult said that Trump had bounced back from his ordeals of impeachment and being fingered as the instigator-in-chief of one-six. A majority of Republican voters (54 percent) now say they would support Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election – “matching the share who said the same in late November, before his standing dipped in a survey conducted shortly after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.”

With Trump in the race, bellowing and bullying his way towards a third nomination, the Morning Consultants say he now holds a 54-12 hammerlock over Mike (“Unhung”) Pence. Former Governor and U.N. Secretary Nikki Haley has a six percent showing, tied with Donald Junior, and ahead of the only two other recorded candidates, Mitt Romney who, his hometown Deseret News reported “would pick up some votes if the 2024 Republican presidential primary election were held today,” and Ted Cruz, whose six percentage point tally dropped by half after revelation of his ill-advised vacation in Cancun at the height of Texas’ troubles.

Unlike Romney, whom MAGA hates, Cruz, who blew up his future at least for the near term by bailing out on his Texas constituents and Junior, whose partisan fervor will make him lucky to win Alabama or Wyoming in a general election, Haley (see Attachments 7, A and B)has walked a fine line between collaboration and condemnation of the ex-President and so, if Djonald and Pence take a pass on 2024, she would be a putative (if slight) favorite going into the primaries. (And if she wins, a Bollywood showdown with Kamala is not out of the question!)

A Wikipedia post-inaugural “poll of polls” also noted the lower-echelon Echelon Insights finding a post-Peach but pre-acquittal ex-Presidential Trump leading, but by a smaller margin of 45% to 21% over Pence, with Don Junior third, Haley fourth and a pre-Cancun Cruz a close fifth.

All the other pre-Inaugural and pre-election 2024 speculative polls noted by Wiki had Trump (who would be 78 on January 20, 2025) beating out Pence by substantial margins, except those that did not include him on their list of candidates, based on the confusion and chaos occurring for weeks after the election. The Veep outdistanced Romney (who would be a relatively youthful 77) in most of these with Don Junior showing strength when his father was not in the mix… tying Pence in the conservative McLaughlin & Associates/Newsmax tally.

Wiki also mentioned some prospective candidates not presently on the radar including Congressman Dan Crenshaw (who would be the first Chief Executive to sport an eyepatch, like a pirate!), Mike Lindell (the My Pillow guy) and actor/wrestler Duane “The Rock” Johnson.

Yesterday, Djonald Unbowed peeked out of his burrow to do an interview with Newsmax TV, duly reported by USA Today (See Attachment Five) which described his 2024 leanings as “coy”, but noted his ongoing anger against the Republican traitors, especially formerly Majority and now Minority Senate Leader McConnell as “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack,” despite Mitchy’s handing him three Supreme Court Justices in a cardboard KFC bucket.

The prospect of an America back again, or great again, or something again has incited foreign as well as domestic interest – perhaps more among those not freezing their privates off (like those Cancoccoonerists whom Ted Cruz may well have sacrificed his career to join.

“Till now, Trump has not given a clear message about whether or not he would be returning for the presidential elections in 2024. However, it was being assumed that his chances of being the favoured candidate would have taken a dip within his party. This poll has shown otherwise,” declared WION of India.

“Surprisingly, after Trump's acquittal, the number of people in the party who think he should play a major role in the Republican party has increased by 18 per cent.”

The newest polls confirm what other, pre-inaugural soothsayers had looked into their crystal balls, dipped their fingers into the bloody mess of entrails and pronounced: Republicans are ready to re-nominate the magician of Mar-a-Lago in 2024, in an attempt to do a “Cleveland” (not the city, still majorly Democratic, but Grover – the 22^nd and 24^th President(s) of the United States). (See Attachment Six)

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In a related First Amendment issue, the NY Times reported that Fox Business canceled its highest-rated show, “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” on Friday after its host was sued as part of a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit by Smartmatic, a voting systems company. On Tuesday, the pro-Trump cable channel Newsmax cut off a guest’s rant about rigged voting machines and, devolving from the sublime to the ridiculous, Duchess Meghan has won a judgment against the Daily Mail tabloid, a snippet of more tabloid trivia that did, however, raise the fact that other nations have less an appreciation for free speech than do Americans, despite the newly observed initiatives by social media to silence the (mostly right wing) ranters.

The use of defamation suits has also raised questions about how to police a news media that counts on First Amendment protections. But one liberal lawyer said, “It’s gotten to the point where the problem is so bad right now there’s virtually no other way to do it.”

Friday, February 12, 2021 Infected: 27,392,512 Dead: 475,444 Dow: 31,458.40	FEBRUARY 12 – 18 Impeached, but facing near-certain acquittal, E-POTUS celebrates Lincoln’s birthday by playing golf despite being ratted out by his troops, including Oath Keepers who said they waited for his orders to start the killing, his own United Nations queen (and potential 2024 candidate) Nikki Haley (who says “he went down a path he shouldn’t have”). Chinese-Americans celebrate the end of the Year of the Rat by being attacked in ever growing numbers as diseased pariahs, Chinese in China stay home. Vaccine shortage grows, but CDC promises enough for everybody… by July. Dr. F. advises gradual re-opening of schools and public spaces, not as if “turning on a light switch”. Plague said to enhance liver damage in alcoholics
Saturday, February 13, 2021 Infected: 27,492,023 Dead: 480,887	As noted in last week’s Lesson Update, Trump is acquitted 53-47. The same six Republican Senators plus Richard Burr of NC betray him, and Djonald Unconvicted said to be plotting some horrific revenge. The vote is taken and recorded after Democratic House Managers back down on calling Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash, when Trump lawyers vow to retaliate to call “hundreds” of witness to document donkey crimes. God checks in, punishing either liberals for impeaching His President in the first place, or right-wingers for foisting such an idiot on His Country by decreeing a coast to coast, Canada to Mexico blizzard with minus ten temperatures in Austin freezing American flags stiff and creating carnage on black ice highways.
Sunday, February 14, 2021 Infected: 27,575,344 Dead: 483,167	It’s Valentines’ Day; First Lady Doctor Jill decorates the White House lawn with heart-shaped cardboard cutouts reading: Love, Kindness, etc. (while Trump ponders placing Hate, Fraud, and Revenge placards on Mar-a-Lago’s grounds and victorious VanderVeen gloats “we’re going to Disneyland!”). Mitchy explains he would have voted to convict if Trump was still in office earning brickbats from Nasty Nancy while censured Sen. Cassidy (R-La), asked why he betrayed Djonald, answered: “Because he was guilty.” Dr. Jah says vax reactions negligible, but, unfortunately, so is production. Dr. Fauci warns that the UK variant is, like the SAV, more lethal and less vulnerable to vaxxes,
Monday, February 15, 2021 Infected: 27,694,165 Dead: 484,248 Dow: Closed	It’s Presidents’ Day. MAGA calls the conclusion of Peach Two a full and total exoneration, liberals hail the 7 Republican dissenters, now under fire in their home states. Post-Peach prosecutions predicted for New York and Georgia, while Nancy promises a “9/11-like” investigation. IPSOS poll hikes anti-Trump sentiments from 56% to 58%. Authorities decry Daytona 500 as yet another Super Spreader but thousands of doses spoiled as half inch ice accumulations snap Carolina power lines and prompt rolling blackouts in California; military mobilized to vaccinate the vulnerable but are left with empty needles as New York and San Francisco run out of vaxxes. Connecticut runs out of road salt as Seattle has its snowiest day in 52 years, Dallas temperatures fall to minus fifteen, Minnesota’s to minus fifty. God keeps up His pummeling of America for some offense unknown – stormy, f-f-f-reezing weather settles in coast to coast and Canada to Mexico.
Tuesday, February 16, 2021 U.S. Infected: 27,753,415 U.S. Vaxxed: 11.6% Dead: 486,525 Dow: 31,522.75	Djonald Unimportant fading into the rear-view mirror, (most) Presidents duly honored with a Federal day off and Mardi Gras a multi-reasoned bust, America gets back to work… if they can. Bitterly cold weather now blankets the country from Canada to Mexico, storms sweep coast to coast, piling up the snow or melting and refreezing into black ice that obliterates road travel for persons, produce and vaccines. Power failures freezing the homed and homeless alike as far south as Houston, killer tornados lash the South, 72% of America covered with snow and shuttered refineries augur higher gas and fuel oil prices. Let the gouging begin! Nevada cuts back on social distancing regulations so that casinos can start pumping out the cash again. Parler returns as forum for alt-right (but Djonald still banned). President Joe takes his first trip out of DC, visiting Michigan; Trump no longer “hanging over his head”, but Republicans still balking at Stim Three. Plague infections and hospitalizations (but not deaths, now blamed on Superbowl) start declining pending arrival of new British, South Africa and, now, Brazilian variants… all more communicable, more lethal.
Wednesday, February 17, 2021 U.S. Infected: 27,826,812 Dead: 488,174 Dow: 31,613.02	Winter storms intensify, snow and ice swirling northeast from Texas covers roads in Memphis and Louisville, halting Fed Ex vaccine deliveries and power outages causing thousands of doses to rot in useless refrigerators; still, one Dr. Gokul of Houston is fired, de-Doctored and arrested for giving melting vaxxes to random recipients regardless of their place in the quota line that authorities lined them up in. (Still, Galveston orders up reefer trucks to store the dozens of corpses felled by both weather and plague.) Gov. Abbott (R-Tx) blames failure of nation’s-only privatized power grid on… windmills! The liberal media, desperate for “inspirational” tales, discovers one “Mattress Mack” who invites the homeless and frozen Houstonites to shelter on his furniture store floor samples and a 90 year old woman who walks 6 miles through the blizzard to get vaxxed. (Nobody offers her a ride home.) On to Wisconsin goes Joe, promoting a re-opening of schools and promising seven million new jobs, pronouncing: “We’ve got to go Big!” (but also admitting that the old normal won’t return ‘til Christmas, or 2022 (or 2053?). Vaccine production grinds to a half, a Moderna spokesman says more will come out “in a while”. Hospitals run out of N95 masks and even doctors and nurses who have them sicken and die; Feds bust a fake face covering warehouse and confiscate ten million bogus masks like those that killed them. Necktie party, anyone? Right-wing radio scold Rush Limbaugh dies (of lung cancer, not Covid) evoking silence on the left, nostalgia among conservatives.
Thursday, February 18, 2021 Infected: 27,826,812 Dead: 490,540 Dow: 31,493.34	Perseverance survives its “seven seconds of terror”, landing safely on Mars. That’s the good news to dig under the surface of the planet in search of non-infectious life. The rest? Statisticians state that plague has caused a catastrophic one year drop in American life expectancies (2 for Hispanics, 3 for blacks). Brazilian variant discovered in Md. And researchers warn US and UK strains are, in effect, having viral sex – birthing mutant, miscegenated offspring. 625,000 still powerless in Texas, another million in the Carolinas. The afflicted are running out of food and 13 million will be without water until at least Monday– 36 deaths now attributed to freezing and the related carbon monoxide fatalities arising from sleeping in running cars and using defective space heaters. And that’s not even counting the children killed in house fires when the latter tip over, or the skiers buried in avalanches. Gov. Abbott and power privateers admit Lone State power grid was seconds from total annihilation while volunteers in Galveston collecting and warming frozen giant turtles and Sen. Ted Cruz flew off to Cancun for a vacation. “He can stay there,” a constituent snapped while Houston’s Mayor suggested he relocate to a warmer place below the surface of this planet. Quoth another Texan: “This is no longer a crisis. It’s a disaster.”

As the clownshow that was Peach Two vanished, like the ex-President into the past and (above, maybe future), icy road, freezing temperatures and howling blizzards swept across the country. For Don Jones, misery and stagnation were the order of the day – except Texas and a few other afflicted spots where temperatures dipped to 50-year lows, power outages failed and children froze to death in the dark.

THE DON JONES INDEX

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

See a further explanation of categories here…

ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)
DON JONES’ PERSONAL ECONOMIC INDEX (45% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS)
CATEGORY	VALUE	BASE				RESULTS		SCORE				SCORE				OUR SOURCE(S) and COMMENTS
INCOME	(24%)	6/27/13		LAST		CHANGE	NEXT	2/12/21				2/12/21				SOURCE
Wages (hourly, per capita)	9%	1350 pts.		2/12/21		+0.36%	2/26/21			1,428.61					1,428.61					https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages 25.18 nc
Median Income (yearly)	4%	600		2/12/21		+0.02%	2/26/21			667.62					667.77					http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 35,338 346
Unempl. (BLS – in millions	4%	600		12/1/20		+6.35%	2/26/21	318.35				318.35					http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000 6.3%
Official (DC – in millions)	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.01%	2/26/21	383.03				382.99					http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 10,140 141
Total. (DC – in millions)	2%	300		2/12/21		-0.12%	2/26/21	312.46				312.84					http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 18,512 491
Workforce Participation Number (in millions) Percentage (DC)	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.01% -0.002%	2/26/21	311.50				311.49					In 150,064 081 Out 100,679 673 Total: 250,743 754 http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 59.85
WP Percentage (ycharts)*	1%	150		12/1/20		-0.16%	2/26/21	151.74				151.74					http://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 61.40
OUTGO	(15%)
Total Inflation	7%	1050		2/12/21		+0.3%	2/26/21	1,018.32				1,018.32					http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.3
Food	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.1%	2/26/21	283.84				283.84					http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.1
Gasoline	2%	300		2/12/21		+7.4%	2/26/21	317.33				317.33					http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +7.4
Medical Costs	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.5%	2/26/21	288.50				288.50					http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.5
Shelter	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.1%	2/26/21	294.91				294.91					http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.1
WEALTH	(6%)
Dow Jones Index	2%		300	2/12/21		+0.11%	2/26/21	345.28				345.66					https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/DJIA 31,458.40 493.34
Sales (homes) Valuation (homes)	1% 1%		150 150	2/12/21		-1.04% -1.90%	2/26/21	198.50 168.64				196.44 165.43					https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M): 6.76 .69 Valuations (K): 309.8
Debt (Personal)	2%		300	2/12/21		+0.05%	2/26/21	279.49				279.36					http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 62,947 977
	AMERICAN ECONOMIC INDEX (15% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS)
NATIONAL	(10%)
Revenues (in trillions)	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.09%	2/26/21		296.20			296.46				debtclock.org/ 3,462 465
Expenditures (in tr.)	2%	300		2/12/21		-0.09%	2/26/21		222.78			222.58				debtclock.org/ 6,674 680
National Debt (tr.)	3%	450		2/12/21		+0.10%	2/26/21		332.10			331.78				http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 27,903 930
Aggregate Debt (tr.)	3%	450		2/12/21		+0.07%	2/26/21		383.48			383.21				http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 82,421 477
GLOBAL	(5%)
Foreign Debt (tr.)	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.04%	2/26/21			292.34			292.24					http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 7,085 0875
Exports (in billions – bl.)	1%	150		2/12/21		+3.15%	2/26/21				158.05				158.05				https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html 190.0
Imports (bl.)	1%	150		2/12/21		-1.68%	2/26/21				136.82				136.82				https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html 256.6
Trade Deficit (bl.)	1%	150		2/12/21		+2.25%	2/26/21				108.68				108.68				https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/index.html 66.6
SOCIAL INDICES (40%)
ACTS of MAN	(12%)
World Peace	3%	450		2/12/21		-0.3%	2/26/21		401.89				400.68			Myanmar coup and repression escalating, human rights activist turned weak President Aung San Suu Kyi sent off to jail. DHS reports asylum-related border breachings spiking. Guinea says: “What Covid?” – Ebola is back!
Terrorism	2%	300		2/12/21		+0.2%	2/26/21		246.79				246.30			Now, Iran wants to make jar-jar with the evil Yankee binks. Iraqi post-ISISists launch rockets against American bases, shrieking: “Don’t forget us! Please!”
Politics	3%	450		2/12/21		-0.2%	2/26/21		435.56				434.69			Gov. Cuomo (D-NY) accused of undercounting nursing home deaths by half. White House aide threatens reporters. State legislatures censure Republican impeacher-ers for being traitors to Trump and Mitchy for being Mitchy while RAP (Republican Accountability Project) declares war on Djonald’s loyalists as IPSOS post-Peach poll crawls up to 58% (from 56%) Guilty!
Economics	3%	450		2/12/21		-0.1%	2/26/21		400.33				399.93			State and local governments floundering as hotel taxes tank among travel-wary plague tourists. Wall Street goes bananas over bitcoins while Feds launch of Game Stop stock flop probe. Plague-related unemployment means more Americans living in cars.
Crime	1%	150		2/12/21		+0.1%	2/26/21		259.09				258.83			Nerdfight: M.I.T. grad shoots Yale student – still at large. NYC subway stabber kills 2 on the A-train, snatched on Sunday. St. Louis hearse (and body) hijacked. Ohio recruiting scorned lovers to rat out warrant-out exes.
ACTS of GOD	(6%)	(with, in some cases, a little… or lots of… help from men, and a few women)
Environment/Weather	3%	450			2/12/21	-0.7%	2/26/21			419.39				416.45		Brrrr!
Natural/Unnatural Disaster	3%	450			2/12/21	+0.3%	2/26/21			415.16				416.41		Fort Worth leads Texas in icy highway pileups with 130 vehicles, Austin a distant second with 26. 7.4 EQ strikes Japan near (but not at) Fukushima nuke plant. One hundred animals killed in Indianapolis pet store fire. Survival stories predominate, however. Ashley Judd survives broken leg in Congo rainforest. Woman survives one arm being eaten by a tiger. 8 year old girl survives plunge from Maine ski lift. Fishermen pluck lone survivor of shipwreck out of the Atlantic near Bahamas.
LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX (15%)
Science, Tech, Education	4%	600			2/12/21	+0.5%	2/26/21			648.96				652.20		Russians and/or NoKo’s blamed for massive cloud corruption – the former are called “spies”, not “criminals”. US anti-hack “Einstein” program failed miserably. Three missions to Mars in three days… China launches Sunday, UAE Monday (looking for oil?) and US starship “Perseverance” successfully achieves successful touchdown on Mars after surviving “seven minutes of terror”.
Equality (econ./social)	4%	600			2/12/21	-0.3%	2/26/21			572.21				570.49		Bachelor host Chris Harrison cancelled for “excusing historical racism” by female contestant. Racist NYC dogwalker sentenced to receive “sensitivity training”. More assaults on Asians blamed for plague and tech company exposed as ordering Human Resourcethings not to hire them. HULU exploits John Lewis’ “Good Trouble” as a sitcom title! Already???
Health	4%	600			2/12/21	+0.1%	2/26/21			506.33				506.81		New Diabetes 2 drug found to also help weight loss. Vet’s mistake neuters the wrong dog. M’Benz recalls 3 million defective Beemers as Jaguar promises all-electric vehicles by 2025.
Plague						-0.1%				- 202.01				- 202.21		First vaxxes administered at WalMart (or is it Walgreen’s? Both?). TV’s Dr. Jen’s new book, “The New Normal”, advises Americans to “think like a doctor.” Plague blamed for lowering US life expectancy by a year (two for Latinos, three for blacks).
Freedom and Justice	3%	450			2/12/21	-0.1%	2/26/21			449.34				448.89		South Carolina bans abortions, case headed to the Trump Court. NAACP launches the first of a likely twelve million lawsuits against Rudy, alt-right mobsters and The Donald as post-Peach probers investigate TrumpFrauds in NY and Georgia. Still, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wi) continues to assert election fraud and denies that Capitol insurrection ever took place. It was made up. By the Jews. Or the media. Or someone. Britney Spears and Daddy battle over $60M conservatorship.
MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX (7%)
Cultural incidents	3%	450		2/12/21		+0.1%	2/26/21			487.37				487.86		Springsteen endorses his DUI drink of choice: Patron Tequila, facing September 24^th trial. Justin Timberlake apologizes for emabling Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” two decades ago. Singer FKA Twigs accuses actor Shia LeBoeuf of domestic violence. Last lap crash elevates obscure Michael McDowell to Daytona win. Osaka squashes Serena to reach Australian Open finals. Duchess Meghan announces another pregnancy, wins lawsuit against Daily Mail tabloid. RIP jazz musician Chick Corea, salsa king Johnny Pacheco, Bucs’ receiver Vincent Jackson and, of course, Rush.
Miscellaneous incidents	4%	450		2/12/21		-0.1%	2/26/21			472.11				471.64		Census rollout delayed until September for… who knew?... incompetence. Bob Dole (97) and Prince Phillip (99) hospitalized.
The Don Jones Index for the week of February 12th through February 18th, 2021 was DOWN 8.59 points. The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator/ or. The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders. Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com

BACK

See further indicators at Economist here.

ATTACHMENT ONE – from Morning Consult

Trump Emerges From Impeachment Trial With Sturdy Backing From GOP Voters

BY ELI YOKLEY

February 16, 2021 at 6:00 am ET

54% would support him in a hypothetical 2024 primary, a return to pre-riot numbers

· 59% of GOP voters said Trump should play a “major role” in the Republican Party going forward, up 18 points since a Jan. 6-7 survey.

· The share of Republicans who said Trump is at least somewhat responsible for the events of Jan. 6 is down 14 points, to 27%, from early January.

· Overall, 51% of voters disapproved of Trump’s acquittal by the Senate.

Former President Donald Trump has emerged from his second impeachment trial relatively unscathed with Republican voters in yet another sign of his continued strength with the party’s base.

According to a Morning Consult/Politico poll conducted at the conclusion of the Senate’s weeklong trial, a majority of Republican voters (54 percent) said they would support Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election – matching the share who said the same in late November, before his standing dipped in a survey conducted shortly after the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Trump has not said whether he will take another shot at a second term, but suggestions that the trial and fallout from the insurrection would doom the former president’s comeback chances are not borne out by trend data among Republican voters.

Compared with another survey conducted immediately after the Jan. 6 events, the share of GOP voters who said Trump should play a “major role” in the Republican Party has increased 18 percentage points, to 59 percent, continuing an upward trend that started before the Senate trial began. By comparison, just 17 percent said he should play no role at all, at odds with the expectations of some Republican officials, such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), that the trial would spell the end for Trump.

The base’s increased appetite for the former president’s continued presence on the political stage came as Republican voters became less likely to blame Trump for the events that led to the riot. 

Compared with the Jan. 6-7 survey, the share of Republicans who said Trump is very or somewhat responsible for the events fell 14 points, to 27 percent. Over the same time period, the share of GOP voters who blamed President Joe Biden for the riot increased 4 points (to 46 percent) while the share who blamed congressional Democrats increased 10 points (to 58 percent). 

Republicans’ views on responsibility for the Capitol insurrection stand in sharp contrast to the broader electorate: 64 percent of voters overall said Trump is at least partly responsible — as the House impeachment managers argued, pointing to his inflammatory and false rhetoric alleging the 2020 presidential election was stolen. The number is virtually unchanged from the initial post-riot survey. 

Similarly, most minds appear to be made up when voters were asked whether they approved of the House’s vote to impeach Trump, though the fact that a solid majority of voters backed the move illustrates why some Republican officials may be eager for the party to move past No. 45.

Fifty-eight percent of voters — including 52 percent of independents and nearly 1 in 5 Republicans — said they approve of Trump’s impeachment, roughly matching the share who said the same after the House’s Jan. 13 vote.

Additionally, 51 percent of voters, including 76 percent of Democrats and nearly half of independents, said they disapproved of the Senate’s acquittal of Trump. Seventy-nine percent of Republican voters approve of the Senate’s acquittal.

Republican senators who supported Trump’s conviction, such as retiring Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina and Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was just re-elected in November, have faced fierce criticism from their state parties for their votes, echoing the Wyoming Republican Party’s move to censure Republican Rep. Liz Cheney after she voted for Trump’s impeachment.

Amid Republican lawmakers’ attempts at distancing themselves from Trump and the general bad news for the Republican Party in recent weeks, the share of its voters who said the GOP is heading in the right direction has fallen 5 points since immediately after the Capitol riot, to 46 percent. 

ATTACHMENT TWO – from Wikipedia (and various sources)

Prospective November 2024 Presidential candidates

Democratic Party

While Democrat Joe Biden is the incumbent president following the 2020 election and is eligible to run for reelection, he would be 82 years old at the conclusion of his first term. This would make him the oldest person elected to the office, breaking the record of 78 years he set himself in 2021 (he would be 86 at the end of his second term). This has led to speculation that Biden will not seek a second term, which could cause a more competitive primary than would likely occur if Biden pursues his party's nomination as the incumbent president.^[21] He had described himself as a "transitional" candidate at multiple points on the 2020 campaign trail, raising suggestions in the media that Vice President Kamala Harris would be the party front-runner in 2024.^[22] However, he has expressed some interest in running anyway,^[23] and in January 2021, Biden's close ally, fellow Delaware Senator Chris Coons indicated that Biden is planning to run for a second term in 2024.^[24]

Potential candidates

Publicly expressed interest

As of February 2021, the following people have publicly expressed interest about potentially pursuing the candidacy within the previous six months.

· Joe Biden, President of the United States (2021–present); Vice President of the United States (2009–2017); U.S. Senator from Delaware (1973–2009)^[25][24]

Other potential candidates

As of February 2021, the following people have been subjects of significant speculation about their potential candidacy within the previous six months.

· Stacey Abrams, Georgia State Representative (2007–2017); Minority Leader of the Georgia House of Representatives (2011–2017); 2018 Georgia gubernatorial nominee^[26][27]

· Pete Buttigieg, United States Secretary of Transportation (2021–present), Mayor of South Bend, Indiana (2012–2020)^[28][29]

· Kamala Harris, Vice President of the United States (2021–present); U.S. Senator from California (2017–2021); candidate for president in 2020^[30][31]

· Gavin Newsom, Governor of California (2019–present); Lieutenant Governor of California (2011–2019); Mayor of San Francisco (2004–2011)^[32][33]

· Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, U.S. Representative from NY-14 (2019–present)^[34][35]

· Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts (2013–present); candidate for president in 2020^[36][37]

Declined to be candidates

The individuals in this section have been the subject of speculation about their possible candidacy, but have publicly denied interest in running.

· Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York (2011–present); U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (1997–2001)^[38][39]

· Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States (2009–2017)^[40][41][42]

· Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator from Vermont (2007–present); U.S. Representative from VT-AL (1991–2007); candidate for president in 2016 and 2020^[43][44]

Republican Party

Donald Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in 2020 and was impeached by the House of Representatives. He was acquitted in his second impeachment in 2021 and is currently eligible to run again in the 2024 presidential election. If he decides to run, he would be seeking to become the second president after Grover Cleveland to serve two non-consecutive terms.^[45][46]

Potential candidates

Publicly expressed interest

As of February 2021, individuals in this section have expressed an interest in running for president within the previous six months.

· Dan Bongino, commentator, radio host; Republican nominee for Senate in 2012, nominee for House of Representatives in 2014 and candidate in 2016^[47]

· Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey (2010–2018); candidate for president in 2016^[48]

· Tom Cotton, U.S. Senator from Arkansas (2015–present)^[49][50]

· Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas (2013–present); candidate for president in 2016^[51][52][53]

· Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations (2017–2018); Governor of South Carolina (2011–2017)^[54][55]

· Candace Owens, author, commentator, and political activist^[56][57]

· Mitt Romney, U.S. Senator from Utah (2019–present); 2012 Republican presidential nominee; Governor of Massachusetts (2003–2007)^[58][59]

· Donald Trump, President of the United States (2017–2021)^[60][61]

Other potential candidates

As of February 2021, the following people have been subjects of speculation about their potential candidacy within the previous six months.

· Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas (2015–present)^[62][63]

· Charlie Baker, Governor of Massachusetts (2015–present)^[64][65]

· Liz Cheney, U.S. Representative from WY-AL (2017–present)^[66][67]

· Dan Crenshaw, U.S. Representative from TX-02 (2019–present)^[68][69]

· Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida (2019–present); U.S. Representative from FL-06 (2013–2018)^[70][71]

· Larry Hogan, Governor of Maryland (2015–present)^[72][73]

· Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of My Pillow^[74][75]

· Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States (2017–2021); Governor of Indiana (2013–2017); U.S. Representative from IN-06 (2001–2013)^[76][77][78]

· Mike Pompeo, United States Secretary of State (2018–2021); Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (2017–2018)^[79][80]

· Marco Rubio, U.S. Senator from Florida (2011–present); candidate for president in 2016^[81][82]

· Ben Sasse, U.S. Senator from Nebraska (2015–present)^[83][84]

· Donald Trump Jr., businessman and eldest son of former President Trump^[85][86]

· Eric Trump, businessman and second son of former President Trump^[85][86]

Declined to be candidates

The individuals in this section have been the subject of speculation about their possible candidacy, but have publicly denied interest in running.

· Tucker Carlson, talk show host on Fox News (2009–present)^[87][88]

· Josh Hawley, U.S. Senator from Missouri (2019–present)^[89][90]

· Kristi Noem, Governor of South Dakota (2019–present); U.S. Representative from South Dakota (2011–2019)^[91][92]

· Dan Patrick, Lieutenant Governor of Texas (2015–present)^[93][94]

· Tim Scott, U.S. Senator from South Carolina (2013–present)^[95][96][97]

· Ivanka Trump, Senior Advisor to the President of the United States (2017–2021); eldest daughter of former President Trump^[98][99]

· Scott Walker, Governor of Wisconsin (2011–2019); candidate for president in 2016^[100][101]

Libertarian Party

Potential candidates

· Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. Representative from HI-2 (2013–2021)^[102]

Green Party

Potential candidates

· Howie Hawkins,^[103] perennial candidate for Governor of New York; 2020 Green Party presidential nominee^[104]

· Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota (1999–2003); Mayor of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota (1991–1995); 2020 Green Party of Alaska presidential nominee^[105]

Independents, other third parties, or party unknown

Publicly expressed interest

· Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, actor^[106][107]

· Brock Pierce, entrepreneur, actor, candidate for president in 2020^[108][109]

· Kanye West, rapper, producer, businessman, candidate for president in 2020 (registered Republican, ran for office as Independent)^[110][111]

PRIMARY ELECTION POLLING

Democratic Party

Nationwide polling

Poll source

Date(s) administered

Sample size^[a]

Margin of error

Stacey Abrams

Joe Biden

Cory Booker

Pete Buttigieg

Andrew Cuomo

Kamala Harris

Amy Klobuchar

Michelle Obama

Beto O'Rourke

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Andrew Yang

Other

Undecided

January 20, 2021

Inauguration of Joe Biden

McLaughlin & Associates/Newsmax

Dec 9–13, 2020

445 (LV)

–

–

–

3%

5%

5%

25%

2%

29%

–

7%

–

8%^[b]

18%

McLaughlin & Associates/Newsmax

Nov 21–23, 2020

445 (LV)

± 3.1%

–

–

2%

6%

5%

29%

2%

23%

–

6%

–

5%^[c]

23%

Seven Letter Insight

Nov 10–19, 2020

~555 (V)^[d]

± 2.5%

–

74%

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

28%^[e]

–

November 3, 2020

2020 presidential election

McLaughlin & Associates

Nov 2–3, 2020

461 (LV)

–

–

–

2%

8%

8%

18%

–

25%

–

6%

–

6%^[f]

28%

Léger

Aug 4–7, 2020

390 (LV)

± 2.8%

6%

–

6%

16%

21%

19%

6%

–

6%

9%

8%

3%^[g]

–

Republican Party

Nationwide polling

Poll source

Date(s) administered

Sample size^[a]

Margin of error

Tucker Carlson

Ted Cruz

Ron DeSantis

Nikki Haley

Larry Hogan

Mike Pence

Mitt Romney

Marco Rubio

Donald Trump

Donald Trump Jr.

Other

Undecided

Morning Consult/Politico[1]

Feb 14–15, 2021

645 (RV)

± 4%

–

4%

–

6%

1%

12%

4%

2%

54%

6%

13%^[h]

–

Echelon Insights

Jan 20–26, 2021

– (RV)^[i]

–

–^[j]

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

45%

–

37%

19%

2%^[k]

8%

2%

9%

0%

21%

3%

2%

–

10%

11%^[l]

30%

January 20, 2021

Inauguration of Joe Biden

Léger

Jan 15–17, 2021

1,007 (A)^[m]

± 3.09%

–^[j]

6%

2%

7%

6%

13%

19%

3%

29%

2%

12%^[n]

–

–^[k]

9%

3%

8%

7%

22%

20%

4%

–

11%

16%^[o]

–

Ipsos/Axios

Jan 11–13, 2021

334 (A)

± 5.8%

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

57%

–

41%

1%^[p]

Morning Consult/Politico

Jan 8–11, 2021

595 (RV)

± 4%

–

6%

–

5%

0%

16%

6%

2%

42%

6%

14%^[q]

–

McLaughlin & Associates/Newsmax

Dec 9–13, 2020

442 (LV)

–

3%

5%

1%

3%

–

11%

4%

1%

56%

–

7%^[r]

10%

Fox News

Dec 6–9, 2020

~ 413 (RV)

± 4.5%

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

71%

–

21%^[s]

8%

McLaughlin & Associates/Newsmax

Nov 21–23, 2020

442 (LV)

± 3.1%

1%^[j]

4%

2%

4%

–

9%

4%

2%

53%

–

8%^[t]

15%

1%^[k]

7%

2%

6%

–

20%

5%

3%

–

20%

14%^[u]

22%

Morning Consult/Politico

Nov 21–23, 2020

765 (RV)

± 2%

–

4%

–

4%

0%

12%

4%

2%

53%

8%

14%^[v]

–

HarrisX/The Hill

Nov 17–19, 2020

599 (RV)

± 2.26%

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

75%

–

25%

–

Seven Letter Insight[2]

Nov 10–19, 2020

~555 (V)^[w]

± 2.5%

2%

6%

–

7%

–

19%

–

4%

35%

11%

7%^[x]

–

Léger

Nov 13–15, 2020

304 (A)^[y]

± 3.09%

4%^[j]

7%

–

4%

–

22%

8%

5%

45%

–

7%^[z]

–

6%^[k]

14%

–

6%

–

44%

11%

6%

–

–

10%^[aa]

–

November 3, 2020

2020 presidential election

McLaughlin & Associates

Nov 2–3, 2020

449 (LV)

–

2%

5%

2%

8%

–

30%

5%

2%

–

20%

6%^[ab]

21%

YouGov/Washington Examiner

Oct 30, 2020

– (RV)^[ac]

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

38%

–

43%^[ad]

–

Echelon Insights

Aug 14–18, 2020

423 (LV)

–

2%

4%

–

7%

1%

26%

–

5%

–

12%

12%^[ae]

29%

Léger

Aug 4–7, 2020

309 (LV)

± 2.8%

7%

8%

–

11%

–

31%

9%

5%

–

17%

12%^[af]

–

Statewide polling

Florida primary

Poll source	Date(s) administered	Sample size^[a]	Margin of error	Ron DeSantis	Marco Rubio	Rick Scott	Undecided
	January 20, 2021	Inauguration of Joe Biden
	November 3, 2020	2020 presidential election
Fabrizio, Lee & Associates/News4JAX	Released August 15, 2019	– (V)^[ag]	–	37%	26%	18%	19%

Georgia primary

Poll source

Date(s) administered

Sample size^[a]

Margin of error

Chris Christie

Ted Cruz

Nikki Haley

Mike Pence

Mitt Romney

Marco Rubio

Donald Trump

Other

Undecided

January 20, 2021

Inauguration of Joe Biden

University of Nevada/BUSR

Dec 30, 2020 – Jan 3, 2021

209 (LV)

± 7%

1%^[j]

5%

3%

–

2%

3%

73%

2%

–

1%^[k]

15%

8%

36%

6%

3%

–

7%

24%

Maine primary

In Maine's 2nd congressional district

Poll source	Date(s) administered	Sample size^[a]	Margin of error	Ted Cruz	Nikki Haley	Mike Pence	Marco Rubio	Ivanka Trump	Donald Trump Jr.	Other	Undecided
	January 3, 2023	Redrawing of congressional districts after the 2020 redistricting cycle
	January 20, 2021	Inauguration of Joe Biden
	November 3, 2020	2020 presidential election
SurveyUSA / FairVote	Jun 30 – July 6, 2020	604 (LV)	± 4.1%	12%	12%	30%	6%	7%	11%	–	21%

Missouri primary

Poll source	Date(s) administered	Sample size	Margin of error	Josh Hawley	Mike Pence	Ivanka Trump	Undecided
	January 20, 2021	Inauguration of Joe Biden
Remington Research Group/Missouri Scout	Dec 2–3, 2020	840 (LV)	± 3.4%	29%	32%	13%	26%

New Hampshire primary

Poll source

Date(s) administered

Sample size^[a]

Margin of error

Tucker Carlson

Tom Cotton

Ted Cruz

Nikki Haley

Mike Pence

Mitt Romney

Marco Rubio

Tim Scott

Donald Trump

Donald Trump Jr.

Other

Undecided

University of New Hampshire

Jan 21–25, 2021

804 (A)

±2.2%

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

47%

–

45%^[ah]

8%

January 20, 2021

Inauguration of Joe Biden

Praecones Analytica/NH Journal

Nov 30 – Dec 2, 2020

624 (RV)

± 4%

1%^[j]

2%

4%

7%

6%

7%

2%

2%

57%

3%

–

10%

4%^[k]

6%

10%

12%

25%

8%

4%

3%

–

14%

–

14%

University of New Hampshire

Nov 19–23, 2020

533 (RV)

± 2.2%

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

–

73%

–

22%^[ai]

5%

North Carolina primary

Poll source	Date(s) administered	Sample size^[a]	Margin of error	Ted Cruz	Nikki Haley	Mike Pence	Mitt Romney	Marco Rubio	Donald Trump	Other	Undecided
	January 20, 2021	Inauguration of Joe Biden
University of Nevada/BUSR	Nov 30 – Dec 2, 2020	221 (RV)	± 7%	3%^[j]	6%	–	3%	2%	76%	5%	6%
				9%^[k]	9%	48%	9%	3%	–	4%	18%

ATTACHMENT FIVE – from USA TODAY

Too early to say': Donald Trump stays mum on 2024 campaign (but promotes his polls)

David Jackson, February 18^th

Donald Trump wouldn't say Wednesday whether he will run for president again in 2024, but did tout his lingering support among Republicans in the wake of last week's Senate impeachment trial.

"Too early to say – but I see a lot of great polls out there," Trump said during a phone interview with Newsmax TV devoted to eulogizing the late radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who died Wednesday.

Trump also spoke with Fox News and the One American News (OAN) network in phone interviews to talk about Limbaugh. "He was with me all the way," Trump told Fox host Sean Hannity.

Asked about his future, Trump told Hannity "we have a lot to talk about," but he added that "today's all about Rush."

The ex-president answered questions on other issues during the largely friendly interviews. He did not speak in detail about the Jan. 6 insurrection by his supporters, the subsequent impeachment by the House, or the recent Senate trial that ended with his acquittal.

The interviews came a day after Trump issued a scathing statement against Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, widening the rift within the GOP over the ex-president's role in the party moving forward.

Trump is polling well among Republicans.  A Morning Consult/Politico poll released Tuesday said, "A majority of Republican voters (54 percent) said they would support Trump in a hypothetical 2024 presidential primary election."

In the OAN interview, Trump said his political movement "is very strong and it's getting stronger."

Respondents in other polls have criticized Trump's handling of the insurrection.

On Saturday, the Senate acquitted Trump on charges that he incited the riot at the Capitol, but only because prosecutors could not muster the two-thirds vote necessary for conviction; 57 of the 100 senators voted for conviction, including seven Republicans.

In his television interviews, Trump also echoed his false claims of his election loss to President Joe Biden and said that Limbaugh agreed with his protests. "Rush felt we won and he was quite angry about it," Trump said during an interview on Fox News earlier in the day.

In addition being coy about 2024 during the interviews, Trump also told Newsmax TV:

· He doesn't want to return to Twitter, and is looking for alternative social media outlets. 

· He criticized Biden over comments about vaccine preparation and claimed the new president is not tough enough on China.

· He again attacked McConnell, who criticized Trump for lies about the election process that inspired extremists to attack the U.S. Capitol.

"The Republicans are soft," Trump said. "They only hit their own – like Mitch."

In his written statement, Trump blamed McConnell for recent Republican losses, and said, "Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack." He added that "if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again."

McConnell actually voted to acquit Trump, but, he said, only because he did not think it was constitutional to conduct a trial of a president who is no longer in office. McConnell had also opposed staring the trial while Trump was still in office.

In casting his acquittal vote, the Kentucky senator did criticize Trump, saying his false claims about the election inspired the rioters.

"The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their President," McConnell said on the Senate floor. "And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole which the defeated President kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth."

ATTACHMENT SIX – from History.com

UPDATED: AUG 21, 2018 ORIGINAL: OCT 27, 2009

Grover Cleveland

Grover Cleveland (1837-1908), who served as the 22nd and 24th U.S. president, was known as a political reformer. He is the only president to date who served two nonconsecutive terms, and also the only Democratic president to win election during the period of Republican domination of the White House that stretched from Abraham Lincoln’s (1809-65) election in 1860 to the end of William Howard Taft’s (1857-1930) term in 1913. Cleveland worked as a lawyer and then served as mayor of Buffalo, New York, and governor of New York state before assuming the presidency in 1885. His record in the Oval Office was mixed. Not regarded as an original thinker, Cleveland considered himself a watchdog over Congress rather than an initiator. In his second term, he angered many of his original supporters and seemed overwhelmed by the Panic of 1893 and the depression that followed. He declined to run for a third term.

Early Career

Stephen Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey, on March 18, 1837. He was the fifth of nine children of Richard Falley Cleveland (1804-53), a Presbyterian minister, and Anne Neal Cleveland (1806-82). In 1841, the family moved to upstate New York, where Cleveland’s father served several congregations before his death in 1853.

Did you know? Grover Cleveland vetoed twice as many congressional bills as all 21 of the presidents who preceded him combined--414 vetoes in his first term.

Cleveland left school following his father’s death and started working in order to help support his family. Unable to afford a college education, he worked as a teacher in a school for the blind in New York City and then as a clerk in a law firm in Buffalo, New York. After clerking for several years, Cleveland passed the state bar examination in 1859. He started his own law firm in 1862. Cleveland did not fight in the American Civil War (1861-65); when the Conscription Act was passed in 1863, he paid a Polish immigrant to serve in his place.

Sheriff, Mayor and Governor

Cleveland’s first political office was sheriff of Erie County, New York, a position he assumed in 1871. During his two-year term, he carried out the death sentence (by hanging) of three convicted murderers. In 1873, he returned to his law practice. He was persuaded to run for mayor of Buffalo in 1881 as a reformer of a corrupt city government. He won the election and took office in 1882. His reputation as an opponent of machine politics grew so rapidly that he was asked to run as the Democratic candidate for governor of New York.

Cleveland became governor in January 1883. He was so opposed to unnecessary government spending that he vetoed eight bills sent up by the legislature in his first two months in office. But while Cleveland was popular with the voters, he made enemies within his own party, particularly the powerful Tammany Hall political machine in New York City. However, he won the respect of New York state assemblyman and future U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) and other reform-minded Republicans. Cleveland was soon regarded as presidential material.

First Term in the White House: 1885-89

Cleveland won the Democratic presidential nomination in 1884 in spite of the opposition of Tammany Hall. The 1884 presidential campaign was ugly: Cleveland’s Republican opponent, U.S. Senator James G. Blaine (1830-93) of Maine, was implicated in several financial scandals, while Cleveland was involved in a paternity case in which admitted that he had paid child support in 1874 to a woman who claimed he was the father of her child. In spite of the scandal, Cleveland won the election with the support of the Mugwumps, Republicans who considered Blaine corrupt.

Once in office, Cleveland continued the policy of his predecessor, Chester Arthur (1830-86), in basing political appointments on merit rather than party affiliation. He tried to reduce government spending, using the veto more often than any other president up to that point. Cleveland was a noninterventionist in foreign policy and fought to have protective tariffs lowered.

In 1886, Cleveland married Frances Folsom (1864-1947), a student at Wells College in New York who was 27 years his junior. Although Cleveland was not the first president to marry while in office, he is the only one who had the ceremony in the White House. At age 21, Frances became the youngest first lady in U.S. history. The Clevelands would go on to have five children.

The tariff issue came back to haunt Cleveland in the presidential election of 1888. Former U.S. Senator Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) of Indiana won the election, in large part because of heavy turnout by voters in the industrial states of the Northeast who saw their jobs threatened by lower tariffs. Cleveland even lost his home state of New York in that election. He returned to New York City and took a position in a law firm for the next four years.

Second Term in the White House: 1893-97

Unlike the campaign of 1884, the presidential campaign of 1892 was quiet and restrained. President Harrison, whose wife, Caroline Harrison (1832-92), was dying of tuberculosis, did not campaign personally, and Cleveland followed suit. Cleveland won the election, in part because voters had changed their minds about high tariffs and also because Tammany Hall decided to throw its support behind him.

Cleveland’s second term, however, opened with the worst financial crisis in the country’s history. The Panic of 1893 began with a railroad bankruptcy in February 1893, followed rapidly by bank failures, a nationwide credit crisis, a stock market crash and the failures of three more railroads. Unemployment rose to 19 percent, and a series of strikes crippled the coal and transportation industries in 1894. The American economy did not recover until 1896-97, when the Klondike gold rush in the Yukon touched off a decade of rapid growth.

Cleveland was inconsistent in his social views. On the one hand, he opposed discrimination against Chinese immigrants in the West. On the other hand, he did not support equality for African Americans or voting rights for women, and he thought Native Americans should assimilate into mainstream society as quickly as possible rather than preserve their own cultures. He also became unpopular with organized labor when he used federal troops to crush the Pullman railroad strike in 1894.

Cleveland was an honest and hard-working president but he is criticized for being unimaginative and having no overarching vision for American society. Opposed to using legislation to bring about social change, he is best known for strengthening the executive branch of the federal government in relation to Congress.

Final Years

By the fall of 1896, Cleveland had become unpopular with some factions in his own party. Other Democrats, however, wanted him to run for a third term, as there was no term limit for presidents at that time. Cleveland declined, and former U.S. Representative William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) of Nebraska won the nomination. Bryan, who later became famous as an opponent of British naturalist Charles Darwin’s (1809-82) theory of evolution, lost the 1896 election to Governor William McKinley (1843-1901) of Ohio.

After leaving the White House in 1897, Cleveland retired to his home in Princeton, New Jersey, and served as a trustee of Princeton University from 1901 until his death. He refused overtures from his party to run again for the presidency in 1904. His health began to fail rapidly at the end of 1907 and he died of a heart attack at the age of 71 on June 24, 1908. According to two of Cleveland’s biographers, his last words were, “I have tried so hard to do right.”

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – profile from Politico

KIAWAH ISLAND, S.C. – Late last year, Nikki Haley had a friend who was going through a hard time. He had lost his job and was being evicted from his house. He was getting bad advice from bad people who were filling his head with self-destructive fantasies. He seemed to be losing touch with reality. Out of concern, Haley called the man. “I want to make sure you’re okay,” she told him. “You’re my president, but you’re also my friend.”

WHIPLASH

At the time of Haley’s call, Donald Trump—her “friend”—had spent much of the previous month refusing to concede defeat in an election he clearly lost, opting instead to delegitimize the institutions of government that upheld the result, indulge in outlandish conspiracy theories and generally subvert the country’s 244-year-old democratic norms. Republican leaders who possessed the credibility to dispute these claims publicly and exert a counterinfluence over the GOP electorate had chosen not to. Haley was among those who kept quiet.

For the previous four years, since being plucked from the governorship of South Carolina to serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Haley had navigated the Trump era with a singular shrewdness, messaging and maneuvering in ways that kept her in solid standing both with the GOP donor class as well as with the president and his base. She maintained a direct line to Trump, keeping private her candid criticisms of him, while publicly striking an air of detached deference. Upon her resignation in 2018, the New York Times editorial page praised Haley as “that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact.”

Haley told me about this phone call in the second week of December. We sat in the shadow of a twinkling 15-foot Christmas fir inside the parlor of the Kiawah Island Club, an exclusive lair nestled between two golf courses and the Atlantic Ocean where she has lived since returning to private life. I had come to talk with Haley about her future; about how the antics of the outgoing president might complicate her plans to pursue that very office in 2024. Knowing that she did not believe Trump’s conspiracy theories, I asked Haley whether she had attempted to persuade the president that he was wrong—that the election wasn’t rigged, that he had lost legitimately.

“No,” she replied. “When he was talking about that, I didn’t address it.”

Since January 20, 2017, the Republican Party has become defined by its unwillingness to confront—and, in many cases, its willingness to enable—an out-of-control president. Here was Haley, someone with a reputation for speaking candidly to Trump, someone who had the courage as governor to remove the Confederate flag from her state capitol, admitting that she hadn’t bothered to challenge him—even in private—on a deception that threatened the stability of American life. Why not?

“I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged,” Haley told me. “This is not him making it up.”

But Trump was making it up. To date, there had been no discovery of material voting fraud. The president’s legal team had lost 55 court cases and won just one. All 50 states had certified their results and sent a single slate of electors to the Electoral College. Despite all this—despite that politically, legally and constitutionally, it was game over—Trump was inciting threats against judges and elections officials and urging Americans to take matters into their own hands.

She countered that one case remained—a lawsuit brought by the Texas attorney general, endorsed by more than 100 Republican members of Congress, seeking to invalidate tens of millions of votes in battleground states—and it must be heard before Trump stands down. “This is coming to the end,” she said. “Up until now, he has not been able to prove it in court. So, if this continues to go down that path, Biden will be president. He knows that.”

Never mind that the Texas lawsuit was a publicity stunt; never mind that, hours after our conversation, it was shot down by Trump’s own appointees to the Supreme Court. What was more striking was Haley’s underlying position: that because Trump believed he had been robbed, he was therefore justified in saying and doing whatever he pleased.

“You have the president of the United States telling everyone that he was cheated, that the voting systems are corrupt, that we’re living in a banana republic where the deep state has rigged this election against him,” I told her. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“He believes it,” she smiled.

Haley clearly wasn’t prepared to have this conversation. Like so many Republicans, she had expected Trump would either eke out a second term, putting a date-certain on the end of his presidency, or lose so lopsidedly that his career would be toast. Instead, he split the difference, losing by less than one percentage point in each of three decisive states, a result that sent him spiraling into delirium. The resulting paralysis could be seen across the GOP, but Haley was a special case. She knew she could not afford to antagonize the president. But her rationalizations for his behavior were so strained that they called into question her own judgment. This was a test for Haley, an early opportunity to define herself on a question of great national urgency. And she was failing.

“There’s nothing that you’re ever going to do that’s going to make him feel like he legitimately lost the election,” Haley said. “He’s got a big bully pulpit. He should be responsible with it.”

“Is he being responsible with it?” I asked.

“He believes it,” she replied.

Haley would only allow that Trump’s lawyers had “done a disservice to him.” But there was no accountability for his actions. When I pressed her—why couldn’t she answer the basic question of whether the president was acting responsibly?—Haley cut me off, pointing out the window toward an emerald-tinted putting green.

“That would be like you saying that grass is blue and you genuinely believing it. Is it irresponsible that you’re colorblind and you truly believe that?” she said.

“But he swore an oath,” I said, incredulous at her analogy. “This is the president.”

“He believes he’s following that oath,” she shot back. “This would be different if he was being deceptive.”

But what about the president broadcasting a loop of lies that had been thoroughly debunked? Isn’t that being deceptive?

“He deserves the truth. Is he hearing the truth?” Haley told me. “I don’t think certain people around him are telling him the truth.”

Haley had that part right. The president was surrounded by grifters and yes-men of the worst sort. But what about Haley? She was supposed to have more self-respect than a Mark Meadows or a Rudy Giuliani or a Michael Flynn. Why didn’t she tell Trump the truth?

She never offered an explanation for this. What she did offer was reassurance, in the face of my alarm about where all of this might be headed, that everything would be fine. Her friend wasn’t going to do anything crazy.

“If this case falls through,” Haley said, referencing the Texas lawsuit, “He’s going to go on his way.”

She had that part wrong. A few weeks later, Trump stood before a crowd of thousands of MAGA supporters and urged them to march on the Capitol: “We must stop the steal…”

‘SHE LOSES HERSELF IN THE MOMENT’

Walking out of the White House in the fall of 2018, Haley thought the worst was behind her.

No more briefings on presidential tweets. No more knife-fighting with administration officials. No more worrying that Trump would torpedo her career. Settling back into her beloved South Carolina after a 22-month stint in New York, equipped with a big boat and a luxury home and $200,000 speaking gigs galore, Haley counted her winnings. Joining the Trump administration had been a massive gamble, and she hit the jackpot—not merely emerging unscathed from a gauntlet that maimed many of her contemporaries, but looking all the smarter and sturdier for it. She had gained rare foreign policy experience, nailed the role of adult in the room and raised her visibility in front of donors and voters alike. Her political future wasn’t just intact; it was brighter than ever before.

But there is no expiration date on a Faustian bargain. Haley knew from the moment she agreed to work for Trump, a man whose character she had lampooned mercilessly during his run for president, that she would never be rid of him. She knew that the scars of her own life story—from watching her immigrant family ridiculed, to being called a “raghead” by a fellow state lawmaker, to burying nine Black parishioners who were slaughtered by a white supremacist inside their Charleston church—were perpetually at risk of being ripped open by the president she allied herself with.

“Haley is in the same position as all these other Republicans who jumped on the Trump Train,” said Chip Felkel, a longtime South Carolina GOP strategist. “Some of this shit, you can never get clean from it. People will remember.”

Since last fall, I’ve spent nearly six hours talking with Haley on-the-record. I’ve also spoken with nearly 70 people who know her: friends, associates, donors, staffers, former colleagues. From those conversations, two things are clear. First, Nikki Haley is going to run for president in 2024. Second, she doesn’t know which Nikki Haley will be on the ballot. Will it be the Haley who has proven so adaptive and so canny that she might accommodate herself to the dark realities of a Trump-dominated party? Will it be the Haley who is combative and confrontational and had a history of giving no quarter to xenophobes? Or will it be the Haley who refuses to choose between these characters, believing she can be everything to everyone?

A person with no pedigree, no connections, no fancy resumé, doesn’t travel from family accountant to United Nations ambassador in the span of 12 years without prodigious talents. Haley has them. She is unusually bright. She has an acute sense of timing that has allowed her to often (if not always) make her own luck. She is a natural storyteller—someone for whom the best answer is always a riveting anecdote—and has a gift for reading every room, always knowing what people want to hear. She has a warmth and common touch that camouflage her ruthless competitive streak.

But she also has liabilities. What I’ve heard again and again is that Haley’s raw skills obscure an absence of core beliefs and a lack of tactical thinking. I’ve also heard—and witnessed—how her laid-back southern persona conceals a pugnacious impulsive streak. Her unplanned outbursts and bridge-burning decisions are legend in South Carolina where she built a reputation for demanding loyalty but rarely giving it, leaving the road behind her littered with enemies as well as allies.

“Nikki is motivated by instinct, and a lot of times when she’s out on the stump, or in a certain environment, and she feels like saying something, that emotion takes over and she loses herself in the moment,” said Rob Godfrey, who spent six years as Haley’s chief spokesman and no longer works for her. “She can be a tremendous messenger, because of her natural talent. But she doesn’t take well to a lot of coaching.”

This is particularly relevant when it comes to Haley’s relationship with Trump. Her distaste for the man is no secret. But neither is her goal of becoming president. For the past five years, she has struck a delicate balance, and she had done so better than other members of her party. Her vicious criticisms of Trump never came back to bite her, nor did her public silence in the face of his manifest abuses.

But the era of having it both ways is over.

Everything Haley says is being scrutinized by those who have come to question her authenticity—including but not limited to Republican officials, Democratic officials, the primetime lineup at Fox News, the mainstream media and a certain former president of the United States. This much has been impressed upon Haley in recent months: Trump is one person she cannot afford to cast aside. It’s why she wore a dismissive smile as I interrogated her in mid-December, demonstrating unblinking loyalty to a man who was orchestrating a slow-motion mutiny against the U.S. government.

Still, even in those moments, I sensed her posture was unsustainable. Haley might not have a sculpted worldview; she may not have immovable convictions. But she does have an apparent humanity about her. She isn’t indifferent to the suffering imparted by Trump and ignored by so many Republicans. The daughter of Indian immigrants, Haley has often talked of needing to validate their trust in this country; to prove to them that “coming to America was the best decision they ever made.” Having conquered the bigoted world of South Carolina politics, she once felt emboldened to speak her truth about Trump’s racism, about the menace of white supremacy, about the demons that must be exorcised from the Republican Party. But since joining the administration, Haley has dialed back such moralizing, even when it’s been difficult to do so. This is her constant tension, a tug-of-war between conscience and calculation.

Many of Haley’s associates have long predicted this tension would inevitably lead to a sharp break with her former boss. The unanswered question always was: Once the break happens—and once the backlash comes for her—how would Haley respond? Would she dig in, decide to run a harder, more uncomfortable campaign that aligns with her beliefs about Trump and the party? Or would she pull back, spooked by the ferocity of the far right, and choose to conform in the name of bettering her odds at the presidency?

January 6 offered the beginnings of an answer.

Three and a half weeks after our discussion at the Kiawah Island Club, insurrectionists scaled the walls of the U.S. Capitol building, laid siege to the House and Senate chambers and hunted for top government officials to assassinate. The president barely lifted a finger to stop the rampage, and by then it was too late. Five Americans died, including Brian Sicknick, a Capitol police officer.

Flying down to Florida the next day, for a much-anticipated keynote speech to the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, Haley had a decision to make. She could continue to straddle the realms of the MAGA insurgency and the GOP establishment, couching a mild rebuke of Trump in a broader call for unity, doing just enough to satisfy the graybeards without alienating the redhats. Or she could go with her gut.

“President Trump has not always chosen the right words. He was wrong with his words in Charlottesville, and I told him so at the time,” Haley told the RNC crowd, a ballroom stuffed with Trump supporters. “He was badly wrong with his words yesterday.”

Then, she added: “And it wasn’t just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.”

HALEY ON REPUBLICAN SUPPORTERS OF TRUMP

“I talked to this woman this morning, and she said, 'You know that the people that stormed the Capitol, there were a lot of Antifa. And what they did was if they took their MAGA hat and turned it backwards, that was their signal that they were Antifa.' This was an educated, smart, longtime Republican woman. … We’ve got a lot of work to do. They've been lied to by everybody.”

To the skeptic, it might appear that Haley had done what was politically expedient, throwing Trump under the bus to curry favor with party elites. “She did it her own way in South Carolina, and it worked, because she was authentic. If she becomes contrived and consultant-driven, it’s not going to work,” said Kellyanne Conway, who served as Trump’s White House counselor and remains a top adviser to former vice president Mike Pence. “I’m surprised that somebody who took down the old boys network to become governor thinks she needs the old boys network to become president.”

Make no mistake: Haley does want to be president. She told me no final decision has been made. But she has secured commitments from top party strategists, including pollster Jon Lerner and consultant Nick Ayers, men with a plan for making her America’s first woman president. She has used a non-profit to travel and raise funds, and recently launched a political action committee to turbocharge her activity. She has built a stump speech that’s an extension of her Trump-era tightrope routine. Though a formal launch is still two years off, Haley’s stealth campaign for the presidency has been underway for some time.

And yet, if Haley had simply wanted some separation from the president, she could have done it with less risk. She could have rebuked his conduct on January 6 alone, the way other Republican leaders had. Haley went well beyond that. In so doing, she instantaneously severed ties with Trump and his loyalists, forsaking her slow-and-steady theory of unifying the Republican Party.

This was encouraging—and deeply vexing. Haley told RNC members what they didn’t want to hear. Yet it took an invasion of the U.S. Capitol for her to speak a truth that she knew all along—a truth many Republicans knew all along, a truth that might have saved lives and kept the country from enduring a horrible ordeal.

Comparing her remarks to the RNC, versus those she made to me just weeks earlier, it was clear that two distinct versions of Haley were on a collision course. A few days later, I jumped on a flight to South Carolina and braced for impact.

‘I’M DISGUSTED BY IT’

“I don’t talk a lot about the Charleston tragedy, from a very personal level,” Haley said quietly, by way of explanation.

It was a gloomy Tuesday, January 12, and we were back on Kiawah Island, back in that same elegant country club. This time the room was darker. The Christmas tree was gone and so was the smile on Haley’s lips.

“But when Charlottesville happened, I was very triggered,” she said, recalling the fatal 2017 rally of white supremacists and the president’s coddling of them. “I know that bad things can happen. And I called [Trump] and I said, ‘You need to realize your words matter and what you say, and you think you’re saying, and what someone else may hear can be very different things. You have to understand that people can take that and hurt people with it.’

“He said, ‘Nikki, Nikki. This isn’t Charleston, this isn’t Charleston,’” Haley recalled. “I said, ‘I’m not saying this is Charleston. I’m saying that I know that certain people hear your words and will react to that and you have to be careful with that.’”

She took a breath. “Fast forward, I’m watching the television the morning of the 6th and I see Don Junior get up there,” she said, reciting the president’s son’s calls to action against Republican leaders, closing her eyes as if reimagining the scene. “And then I hear the president get up there and go off on Pence. I literally was so triggered, I had to turn it off. I mean, Jon [Lerner] texted me something and I said, ‘I can’t. I can’t watch it. I can’t watch it,’ because I felt the same thing. Somebody is going to hear that, and bad things will happen.”

I asked Haley whether she has spoken to Trump since January 6. She shook her head.

“When I tell you I’m angry, it’s an understatement,” Haley hissed, leaning forward as she spoke. “Mike has been nothing but loyal to that man. He’s been nothing but a good friend of that man. … I am so disappointed in the fact that [despite] the loyalty and friendship he had with Mike Pence, that he would do that to him. Like, I’m disgusted by it.”

At that moment an article of impeachment was being drafted in Congress. There was even pressure for Trump’s cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him from office. Haley rolled her eyes. “I think it’s a waste of time. And I think impeachment is a waste of time.”

So, I asked, how should the president be held accountable?

“I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated,” Haley said. “I think his business is suffering at this point. I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving.”

I reminded her that Trump has been left for dead before; that the base always rallied behind him. I also reminded her that the argument for impeachment—and conviction—is that he would be barred from holding federal office again.

“He’s not going to run for federal office again,” Haley said.

But what if he does? Or at least, what if he spends the next four years threatening to? Can the Republican Party heal with Trump in the picture?

“I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”

This was the most certainty I’d heard from any Republican in the aftermath of January 6. And Haley wasn’t done.

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” she said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

But do rank-and-file Republicans feel the same way? I told Haley about recent polling shared with me, showing his approval ratings in deep red districts hadn’t flinched.

“Listen, when I walked in that RNC room, I was not expecting a whole bunch of love from that speech,” she said. “I know how much people love Donald Trump. I know it. I feel it. Whether it’s an RNC room or social media or talking to donors, I can tell you that the love they have for him is still very strong. That’s not going to just fall to the wayside.”

She added: “Nor do I think the Republican Party is going to go back to the way it was before Donald Trump. I don’t think it should. I think what we need to do is take the good that he built, leave the bad that he did, and get back to a place where we can be a good, valuable, effective party. But at the same time, it’s bigger than the party. I hope our country can come together and figure out how we pull this back.”

But how can America “come together” without anyone taking responsibility for the events spanning November 4 to January 6, I asked Haley. Did she regret not talking Trump down when she had the chance? Did she regret not speaking out publicly? Did she regret laughing off my questions about how dangerous this campaign of mass deception might prove to be?

“At the time, I didn’t think that was dangerous,” Haley said. “I didn’t think that there was anything to fear about him. There was nothing to fear about him when I worked for him. I mean, he may have been brash. He may have been blunt. But he was someone who cared about the country. … I still stand by that. I don’t think we should ever apologize for the policies that we fought for and the things that we did during his four years. Since the election—” she stopped herself. “I mean, I’m deeply disturbed by what’s happened to him.”

Haley repeated these sentiments over the course of a two-hour conversation: “Never did I think he would spiral out like this. … I don’t feel like I know who he is anymore. … The person that I worked with is not the person that I have watched since the election.”

Was Haley really surprised that Trump, who spent the previous four years inventing claims of mass voter fraud, would try to destabilize the democratic process? If the answer is yes, as she insists, it raises a fundamental question about her discernment. If she so badly misread Trump—a man whose habits and methods she had ample opportunity to study up close—then how can she be trusted to handle the likes of Vladimir Putin?

Haley bristled at the question. “What I’ll tell you is you can look at my leadership from the very first second I got into that statehouse to the second that I was governor to everything I did there at the U.N. My leadership stands on its own grounds. … I’m not going to apologize,” she said. “That’s not poor leadership. That’s sitting there looking at someone knowing the relationship that you had, knowing the good that he had, and watching someone fall apart, in awe, going, ‘How did this happen?’”

Listening to Haley, it occurred to me that one day soon, people could be watching her fall apart. They might ask the same question: “How did this happen?”

If that day comes, the answer will rest on a simple truth: She is still trying to have it both ways. To argue that Trump only spent two months pummeling our institutional norms—instead of four years—is to refuse admitting any culpability for the party, and the country, going off the rails. But to state that millions of people followed him into a dead-end of social and political violence is to acknowledge that something is very wrong—something that was wrong before January 6, and something that was wrong before 2016.

At the heart of this contradiction is a showdown between who she wants to be and who she thinks she needs to be. Nikki Haley’s fundamental conflict is not with Donald Trump. It’s with Nikki Haley.

THE OUTSIDER

Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhawa were an ideal match. Both hailed from the Punjab region of India. Both were Sikh. Ajit earned a master’s degree in biology, while Raj was the rare Indian woman to complete law school. The newlyweds moved to Vancouver in the 1960s so he could pursue a Ph.D. Upon graduation, Ajit found a teaching position at Voorhees College, a small, historically Black school in Denmark, South Carolina. Raj was not sold on moving to America. Nevertheless, the Randhawas touched down in Columbia, the state’s diminutive capital city, in 1969, and settled into Bamberg, population 2,500, where they rented a small home on the landlord’s condition they would not entertain Black guests.

Bamberg had long been evenly split between Black and white families, but none of the lifelong residents I met there recalled ever seeing a brown person before the Randhawas came to town. Fitting in was not possible. Raj wore her traditional sari and a bindi on her forehead; Ajit sported a turban everywhere he went. By the time Nimrata Nikki Randhawa arrived in 1972—yes, “Nikki” is on her birth certificate— some of the shock had worn off locally.

“There were all these whispers, all these rumors, because of the turban and whatnot,” remembered Cindy Kilgus, a white woman in her sixties, who befriended the Randhawas. “It took some people a while. But once they got over that”—she paused—“newness, everyone came to love them. They became a big part of this community.”

HALEY ON HER CHILDHOOD

“It was kind of isolating, because while my friends were all getting to eat spaghetti and cheeseburgers, I was having to eat Indian food again with my mom.”

There were growing pains. Haley told me she cannot recall a time in which she wasn’t aware of being different. She is still animated by the stories of her childhood. How teachers made her play Pocahontas in the Thanksgiving pageant. How her Black and white classmates asked her to choose which racial team she would play kickball for. How she was disqualified from the Little Miss Bamberg pageant because there were only awards for a white winner and a Black winner. (This last tale, which has become central to family folklore, was disputed by locals I spoke with. “To this day, the ladies who ran the pageant still say that never happened,” said Nancy Foster, the mayor of Bamberg and a longtime acquaintance of the Haley family.)

Her most vivid memory is of driving to Columbia as a little girl with her father and stopping at a roadside fruit stand. As he bagged produce, the fidgety owners eyeing his turban, Haley saw one of them pick up a phone, and within minutes two police cars came zooming up. “My dad didn’t say a single word going home. He was hoping I didn’t notice. But I hurt for him,” she recalled. “Whether it was that, or whether it was us walking through a grocery store and people staring and pointing, hearing them make fun of him or what my mom was wearing, or when the country club opened up and they invited everybody, or we went to the picnic and nobody would sit with us—” she paused. “I remember that pain.”

The Randhawa family’s fortunes changed when Raj quit her job teaching sixth graders and opened a small clothing store, Exotica. Over time, her handmade formal gowns became so popular with local ladies—the word spreading from Bamberg to surrounding towns—that Raj bought a small storefront off Main Highway 301. It was a stunning success, both commercially and culturally. Ajit and Raj began organizing an annual “International Fest,” a Bamberg-wide event featuring music and cuisine from around the world. Slowly, the Randhawas were transformed from suspect outsiders into civic pillars.

“Their store put Bamberg on the map,” said Brian Glover, 62, who was born and raised there. “Some of the big Black gospel singers of those days, they used to come here just to buy their dresses. Shirley Caesar used to come here. To Bamberg! She had shows all over the south, and she would come to Exotica to buy her dresses. That became a real point of pride around here.”

Ajit and Raj had found financial success, enough to send Nikki to a nearby private school, Orangeburg Prep (home of the Indians, as luck would have it). But she headed straight home each day, using her math skills to take over Exotica’s books at age 13. Haley soaked her teenage angst in the sounds of her musical idol, Joan Jett, dreaming of a day when she might be unleashed on the world.

“Her parents were very strict. She wasn’t allowed to do a lot of things socially. I think that always made her feel different,” said Heather Cockrell, who befriended Haley on her first day at Orangeburg Prep, and wound up working alongside her stocking shelves at Exotica. “I know there were other kids who made her feel different, and she was constantly aware of that. But she didn’t want to draw attention to it, either. She would always try to be self-deprecating; that was her way of making people feel comfortable.”

Finally escaping home and enrolling at Clemson University, the young accounting major felt liberated. She had led a life of rules and labels. Now she was in a seat of self-determination. Friends remember her charming her way into a waitressing job and negotiating down the rent with a notoriously stingy landlord. They remember her fighting a years-long battle with her parents over a boyfriend, Bill Haley. They also remember her deciding that Bill should go by his middle name, Michael, and her future husband agreeing. “Nikki was very, very stubborn,” Carie Mager, her college roommate, told me. “If she decided something had to be a certain way, you weren’t going to change her mind.”

But there were also fits of doubt. Politics had never been a subject of discussion in the Randhawa family; to this day, she claims to have no idea whom her parents would have voted for. The late ’80s and early ’90s, her college years, were a time of disruption and transition, with Americans gripped by everything from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the first Gulf War. Haley would host spaghetti dinners for classmates, facilitating conversations on current events. What was notable, friends recall, was Haley’s reluctance to attach herself to any position. She was conservative, at least culturally, but kept her distance from the furies of campus politics. Nobody knew if Haley voted, much less whom she voted for.

“Let me put it this way,” chuckled Mikee Johnson, a prominent Republican businessman in South Carolina, who was the student body president at Orangeburg Prep and ran with the same group of friends in their college years. “If you’d asked me back then, of the 100 people in her class, who might run for office one day, I would have put her in the bottom 10.”

In the decade after college, Haley did nothing to change that perception. She got married, had two kids, worked in accounting for a Charlotte recycling firm and finally returned home to handle the finances of the family store. Exotica had swelled into a million-dollar business with a new location in Lexington, an up-and-coming suburb of Columbia.

But some familiar problems resurfaced. Haley felt cloistered and impatient. She was eager for an outlet to channel her restlessness. What she found was politics.

‘IT WOULD NOT BE AN EASY ROAD’

First at the local chamber of commerce, and later, within a group of female small business owners, Haley discovered something: People liked her. They listened to her. She had a certain magnetism. What she lacked was political experience—or even a party affiliation. By Haley’s account, she had an epiphany, realizing she was a Republican because of her beliefs in business and individual responsibility. But for a striver in Lexington County, becoming a Democrat was never an option. Her associates urged a run for the school board in 2004. Haley had other plans.

“She came to see me before running for state representative, to see what I thought, but she seemed to have already made up her mind,” recalled Rita Allison, a former GOP lawmaker who had previously run for lieutenant governor.

The story underscores how Haley has consistently downplayed the narrative of her searing ambition. Haley has often described how it was Allison who suggested running for the House seat; Haley claims she didn’t know who currently held it, or whether she lived in that district. But according to Allison—who likes Haley and hopes she becomes president—that is not true.

“Obviously, she had done her research. She knew what district she lived in. She knew who she’d be running against,” Allison told me. “I found her to be very strong-willed, because she knew that he had served many years in the South Carolina house, and I warned her that it would not be an easy road to travel.”

Indeed, Haley was taking on Larry Koon, the longest-serving legislator in Columbia. He had hinted he might retire after 30 years in the statehouse, which was enough to draw another candidate into the race, but then promptly pulled back. It would be a three-way contest for the GOP nomination. Haley was taking on Koon as well as David Perry, a well-known businessman.

The decision shocked Haley’s parents. She embraced the pressure that came with their eyebrows-raised reaction, believing that a victory would, in some way, validate their hardships in America. “I felt like I owed it to my parents,” Haley told me. “I wanted to do it to show them they made the right decision; to show them that things had gotten better.”

For months, she spent every weekday morning camped at the entrance to local subdivisions, coffee and donuts in hand, passing out literature and chatting up locals. On weekends, she knocked doors. Some were put off by her aggressive approach, and her “not-from-around-here qualities,” as Walter Whetsell, a GOP consultant who ran Perry’s primary campaign, told me. Her message was tailored accordingly: “This is no disrespect to Mr. Koon,” Haley assured voters. “This is about the fact that we have way too many lawyers at the state House, and I think you need one really good accountant.”

While she spoke in broad conservative strokes—about getting government out of the way, about running Columbia like a business—she was no firebrand. Press clippings reveal a candidate focused on boosting education budgets and investing in rural communities. Unlike other aspiring Republicans, Haley refused to sign the “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” a document that bound lawmakers never to raise taxes for any reason. “I see that as giving a blanket answer,” Haley told the Columbia State newspaper. “No one wants to see taxes raised, but I think that it would be closed-minded to sign a pledge.”

Haley shocked local politicos by capturing 40 percent of the vote, keeping Koon under the 50 percent needed to win the primary outright. What ensued was ugly: During the two-week runoff election, Koon’s campaign published ads referring to her as “Nimrata N. Randhawa,” and distributed mailers showing her alongside her father in his turban. Smear campaigns spread rapidly online. Some messages mocked her eastern-world roots; others explicitly accused her of being a Muslim radical. This wasn’t yet three years removed from the attacks of September 11; Haley’s legislative district was deeply conservative, dominated by fundamentalist Christians and more than 90 percent white.

An unlikely hero in Haley’s story is Joe Wilson, a congressman who would later gain infamy for shouting “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during his address to a joint session of Congress. Wilson, who chaired the India Caucus on Capitol Hill, had kept a close eye on the campaign in Lexington County, pledging neutrality. But when the racist ads hit, Wilson drove to Exotica and introduced himself to the Randhawa family. He took a picture with the candidate and her parents—decked out in their finest Punjabi garb—and authorized her to disseminate it from her campaign.

The people advising Haley were nervous about the photo—and drawing undue attention to her family. But she wouldn’t hear it. This wasn’t just a matter of sticking up for her parents, Haley told them. It was good politics.

“By that point, Nikki had already met every single voter who got those mailers. They all knew her. They all had talked to her,” said Katon Dawson, who was then chairman of the state Republican Party. “It made a lot of those people angry on her behalf.”

Haley won the runoff by 10 points. But finding acceptance in Columbia wouldn’t come easy.

Haley proved to be popular among her fellow freshmen and was voted her class president. But to the incumbents in Columbia, particularly on the Republican side, she was an outsider—and a threat. “I’m telling you, nobody liked her. Nobody wanted to work with her. They hated her,” state Rep. Nathan Ballentine, who entered the legislature with Haley and became her closest friend, told me. “And it’s weird, because she was such a normal person. She wasn’t very political at that point; she was just sort of happy to be there and trying to make friends. But she was different. And the good old boys wanted to remind her she was different.”

This manifested itself in especially cruel ways. Haley, who converted to Christianity and joined a Methodist church with Michael, remained open about her continued visits to the Sikh temple with her family. Some of her Republican colleagues would try to provoke her with jokes about alien gods; others would force uncomfortable discussions about religion. It became a running joke for Jake Knotts, a veteran GOP lawmaker, to ask Haley to deliver a prayer before the party’s luncheons.

“Everybody knew she wasn’t a real Christian. Everyone knew she converted for political purposes,” Knotts, who is now retired, told me. “Her whole career has been stair-climbing, and becoming a Methodist was just one of those stairs.”

HALEY ON CONFRONTING SEXISM

“I’ve always been the only one of something. The only one. There’s never been a line to the women’s bathroom in any of the jobs that I did.”

It’s worth noting that this is not a minority view in South Carolina; unfounded rumors about her religion aside, Haley is viewed by many political insiders as someone willing to do whatever necessary to advance. If so, her advance was somewhat halting, owing to a reliance on instinct over ideology. Haley faced considerable backlash for sponsoring a 2007 bill mandating HPV vaccines for minors without any provision for parental opt-out, the sort of big-government program no conservative politician would support unless her political antennae was broken.

In a sense, Haley was shaped not by any particular cause or dogma, but by the disrespect she encountered inside the GOP caucus. Rejected by her colleagues, Haley stopped listening to conventional wisdom and started rebelling against the Republican leadership. “I don’t need to be that person that everyone likes,” she remembered thinking. “I don’t need to be that person that gets along with everybody.”

Maybe she wouldn’t have become an outsider, I suggested, if her colleagues had accepted her.

“I think that’s probably very true,” she replied.

This is the best window into Haley’s formative political period. She came to be loathed by many of her fellow Republicans for not being a team player; for going rogue on certain votes and procedures that made them look slimy or stupid to her benefit. But it was their exclusion of her in the first place that set Haley down this path of torturing the establishment, of tapping into the sentiments of the Tea Party, and ultimately, of allying herself with Governor Mark Sanford.

South Carolina’s governorship is among the nation’s weakest, a legacy that dates to antebellum concerns that a Black man might one day be elected to the state’s highest office and would need constraining by white legislators. (They certainly didn’t foresee a brown woman burying the Confederate flag.) Many governors have treated the position as almost ceremonial in nature. Sanford did not. A quirky intellectual with a libertarian streak, Sanford spent his two terms at war with the statehouse, demanding less spending, and members of his own party regularly defied him. Haley was one of the few lawmakers to stand with Sanford, even when it came to some of his more indefensible positions, such as turning down money from Obama’s stimulus package in 2009.

“I do think she agreed with some of what Sanford believed in. But she was also at war with the party, just like he was,” said Luke Byars, the former executive director of the state GOP. “That was what came to typify her political philosophy. She seemed to enjoy fighting her own party.”

Haley’s biggest victory came after a bloody internal campaign to force lawmakers to cast every vote on-the-record. This struck many of her colleagues as symbolic showboating. It certainly was that—but it was also a master stroke of populism. Haley traversed the state, riling up constituents with stories of their elected officials avoiding accountability. It cost Haley a coveted committee seat. But it won her the affection of Sanford.

Uninspired by the field of Republicans running to replace him, Sanford spent the spring of 2009 talking with his team, led by pollster and chief adviser Jon Lerner, about how a governor’s legacy hinges on the election of a like-minded successor. Then, one day, Sanford surprised everyone. He said he’d just met with Haley—who was then angling for state treasurer—and urged her to run for governor instead.

He asked Lerner to commission a poll, and they scheduled a meeting one week later with Haley and her husband at the governor’s mansion. When they gathered, Lerner said there was bad news: Haley was identified by just 6 percent of likely voters, and her ballot share was 3 percent. There was a silver lining: None of the other GOP contenders were particularly well-liked, despite being well-known. Still, there was no apparent path for Haley; her only hope was the support of a polarizing and mercurial governor.

Sanford put in writing the steps he would take to elect Haley—ad appearances, fundraisers, public events. Her friends urged her to play the long game and run for treasurer. But Haley couldn’t help herself.

‘I’LL NEVER GET OVER IT’

In June 2009, the month after Haley stunned Republicans in the state by declaring her candidacy for governor, Mark Sanford disappeared on his infamous hike down the “Appalachian Trail.” When the news broke that Sanford had in fact gone to Argentina to visit his mistress, it seemed to sound a death knell for Haley’s infant campaign. All of the people who had helped her up to that point were working for rival campaigns; just three of her House colleagues endorsed her.

“She was not taken seriously. There were like ten of us who thought she could win,” recalled Matt Moore, a longtime friend of Haley’s whom she later installed as state party chairman. “When Sanford went down, her fundraising completely dried up, and we all thought it was over. I mean, people were calling for her to drop out, and I remember her being near tears. She wondered aloud if it was worth staying in.”

A turning point for Haley came in August, when she attended a candidate training seminar on the west coast and met Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Aware of her predicament, the presidential scion advised Haley to embrace being an underdog. If she ran a grassroots campaign, he told her, meeting with as many voters and groups as possible, she could sneak up on the field. Inspired, the longshot candidate started touching every corner of the state, ferried from stop to stop by Tim Pearson, one of Sanford’s ex-staffers, in a Toyota 4-Runner, talking to rooms of 10 or 12 people at a time. The campaign had no real fundraising apparatus, so Haley brought a wicker basket, all but begging for donations.

Her Republican rivals thought it all rather pathetic. But it seemed to be working. When Lerner polled the race at Christmas time, he was pleasantly surprised to see Haley’s name identification had jumped to 18 percent from 6 percent back in May. She still trailed far behind the other three candidates—Congressman Gresham Barrett, Attorney General Henry McMaster and Lieutenant Governor André Bauer—but there was cause for hope in the Haley campaign.

Barrett, considered the favorite in the race, knew Haley was attacking his right flank. But his team didn’t take her seriously. “Here’s what the focus groups tell us—she’s smart, she’s talented, she gets results and she’s conservative,” Whit Ayres, the pollster to Barrett’s campaign, briefed the high command at the beginning of 2010. “If she ever starts to raise money, we’re screwed.”

To raise money—real money—Haley needed to get in front of more people. Fortunately, that January, she stole the show during an MSNBC-hosted primary debate, savaging Barrett over his vote for the bank bailouts in 2008. The other thing she needed was big-name endorsements. Haley’s campaign worked two targets in particular: Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin. The pair of former governors spoke to different constituencies, but both were known to back an underdog.

Haley was busy reeling in a big fish at home. Sanford had refused to resign after his extramarital scandal, making him persona non grata in the race. Privately, however, Haley knew he was sitting on a fortune in campaign cash. Every week, Haley would pay a visit to Sanford’s office, sitting on his couch and describing the financial woes killing her campaign. Every week, Sanford would listen politely, then explain that a massive cash infusion was not part of his written agreement with her. But eventually, Sanford wore down. It wasn’t just Haley’s persistence; several of their mutual associates, including Lerner and Tom Davis, the governor’s chief of staff, argued she was within striking distance and Sanford could put her over the top, making up for the harm he’d done to her candidacy.

HALEY ON DEALING WITH RACISM IN SOUTH CAROLINA POLITICS

“In the governor’s race, I remember my dad would go stand in the back of the room because he didn’t want anybody to see him. Because he was scared it was going to hurt me. And that was the reason why I started every speech saying, ‘I’m the proud daughter of Indian immigrants.’”

“I agreed to spend about $400,000 on her behalf, and she only had raised $400,000 in her whole campaign,” Sanford recalled. “I didn’t feel good about giving her that much. But my world was shattered at that point. They talked me into it.” (Sanford adds: “And then she cut me off. This is systematic with Nikki: She cuts off people who have contributed to her success. It’s almost like there’s some weird psychological thing where she needs to pretend it’s self-made.”)

Haley’s campaign took off. Romney delivered his endorsement right around the time Sanford was writing his check. Erick Erickson, the popular conservative blogger, hosted a “moneybomb” fundraiser that made Haley a celebrity on the right. On Tax Day, she headlined a Tea Party rally at the state capitol; Sanford’s affiliated group shot footage and launched their massive ad campaign. Haley then blitzed local television stations with her own buy, foregoing introductory niceties and savaging her three opponents as weak-kneed pawns of the establishment.

Palin provided the finishing touch. For months, Nick Ayers, the executive director of the Republican Governors Association, had lobbied the former vice presidential nominee for an endorsement. She finally swooped into the state less than a month before the June 8 primary, throwing her weight behind Haley at a rally that saturated statewide media coverage. The race was all but over. “It was like watching a NASCAR driver come screaming from way behind and passing everyone else,” said Dawson, the former state party chairman. “I had never seen anything like it.”

But for Haley, no road worth traveling has been without potholes. In late May, just weeks before the primary, a political blogger who’d done some work for Haley in the statehouse made an explosive allegation: He claimed to have carried on a romantic relationship with her during that time. The following week, a prominent Columbia lobbyist—a paid fundraiser for the Bauer campaign—alleged he and Haley had a one-night stand. And then, days before the primary, Knotts, the senator who had tortured Haley in the legislature, gained national attention for calling her “a raghead” on an internet broadcast.

“When they couldn’t defeat me on the merits, that’s what they did,” Haley told me, angrily denying the affair allegations. “And they literally paid money to have that happen. And it’s something that, I mean, I’ll never get over it.”

To be clear: There has never been any evidence to substantiate the extramarital rumors. (Although some people in Columbia still peddle them unsolicited.) Nor was it ever proven that Haley’s opponents were funding the allegations, though Haley will go to her grave believing that senior officials on both the Bauer and Barrett campaigns played a role.

What is indisputable is that the entire scandal helped Haley. Voters proved mostly sympathetic to the lone female candidate, who looked to be the victim of a clumsily coordinated attack by her male rivals. Meanwhile, a storehouse of opposition research on Haley that had been collected—legitimate demerits that might have actually hurt her campaign—was rendered useless by the feeding frenzy surrounding the affair allegations.

“We had all this bad shit on her—all these fines from the IRS, all these red flags from her accounting work, all these shady payouts she was taking as a consultant while working in the legislature—and we were going to beat her with it during the runoff,” said Terry Sullivan, a longtime GOP consultant and South Carolina native who helped lead Barrett’s campaign. “But that all went to waste. It was impossible to get that information out, because the media was obsessed with a sex scandal. The race was over at that point. So, she’s entitled to believe whatever she wants to believe, but it makes no sense. Why would we sabotage our own strategy?”

For much of election night, she teetered just past 49 percent, appearing at several points to have the votes necessary to hit 50 percent and avoid the runoff altogether. When she fell just short, Haley disappeared into a woman’s room at the restaurant hosting her party and refused to come out. Only after her mother went in and delivered some tough love did her daughter give a quick speech. Two weeks later, Haley thumped Barrett by 30 points, and there could finally be a real celebration.

It came with a hiccup. Haley, who was soon to make history as the country’s first female Indian-American governor, booked the State Museum in Columbia for her party. But the only place the advance team could erect a stage was directly beneath a sign that read ‘Confederate Relic Room.’ Haley wouldn’t stand for it. Her team assembled a banner of red, white and blue balloons and covered up the sign.

‘SHE WILL CUT YOU TO PIECES’

Haley’s honeymoon period was nonexistent.

This was largely because of how she limped into office. Not only did Democrat Vincent Sheheen outhustle Haley on the trail, he ran with all the opposition research her GOP rivals had collected. As the salacious headlines faded, Haley, the accountant and good-government advocate, was confronted with a string of bruising stories—about a messy trail of tax liens and IRS penalties, about a sweetheart six-figure job from a foundation she had backed in the legislature, about a falsified application she submitted to land that job. Sheheen hammered the issue of Haley’s trustworthiness, tying her to Sanford with ads that asked, “Can we afford another governor who says one thing and does another?” In the end, Haley beat Sheheen by 4 points, an embarrassingly narrow margin given the Republican wave nationwide.

All of this only made Haley angrier—and prompted her to take actions that confirmed her skeptics’ worst suspicions. The new governor purged from state boards numerous members with varying degrees of attachment to the “establishment,” a catch-all for anyone who’d supported her rivals in the GOP primary, replacing them with friends and campaign donors. (This included the baffling ouster of state party chairwoman Karen Floyd, who had helped Haley survive the general election, from the powerful port authority board.) She doubled down on Sanford’s approach to the legislature, publishing “report cards” for the public to see how members voted with respect to her priorities. She tried to bully the statehouse with a special session, only to be sued in the state Supreme Court and lose. Meanwhile, Republicans launched an ethics probe alleging she had broken lobbying laws while serving in the House. (The charges were later dropped.) Haley warred with the local media, embracing Palin’s martyrdom routine.

Consumed with retribution, she set about destroying the lobbying practice of the man who’d alleged the one-night stand. She spearheaded an effort to defeat Knotts in his 2012 campaign. (Around the time he lost, a white supremacist murdered six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, an event that reinforced to Haley the need to purge her party of hate-mongers.) In one episode that became lore in Columbia, Haley invited the newly elected chair of the South Carolina GOP, Chad Connelly, to the governor’s mansion for breakfast. She then spent two hours excoriating him for his friendships with strategists from the Barrett and Bauer campaigns, warning Connelly that she would be watching his every move.

“Listen, man. She will cut you to pieces,” said Dawson, the former party chairman and unofficial dean of the state GOP. “Nikki Haley has a memory. She has a memory. She will remember who was with her and who was against her. And she won’t give a second chance to anyone who she thinks did her wrong.”

Haley had once been nicknamed “Mark Sanford in a dress.” But around this time, a modified phrase became popular in Columbia: “Bill Clinton in a skirt.” This wasn’t meant solely as an insult. In addition to her vengeful streak, and her slippery side, everyone could see Haley’s immense political gifts. “In my lifetime in politics, the only person I’ve seen that I can compare her to is Bill Clinton,” said Senator Tom Davis, who was Sanford’s chief of staff as governor. “She has that same charisma, that same pulse on people, that same force of personality.” Mick Mulvaney, the future White House chief of staff who served with Haley in the statehouse, and had his share of run-ins with her over the years, told me Haley perfected the “Clinton model” of icing perceived enemies. “She may be the most ambitious person I’ve ever met. And that’s okay,” Mulvaney said. “I’m just surprised she’s felt it necessary to burn bridges with so many people for no apparent reason.”

Haley has acknowledged her putrid opening act in the governor’s office. She has also said that writing her memoir in 2012 allowed her to vent and move forward. Her friends snicker at this rationalization—Haley’s list of enemies hasn’t shortened one bit, they say—but there is no question she corrected course. With her approval among Republicans scraping 60 percent, the governor began to build relationships with local media. She dialed back the inflammatory Facebook posts and started wooing lawmakers. She sought out advice from an old adviser, Jeb Bush, on tackling education reform. She appointed congressman Tim Scott to the U.S. Senate, making him the first Black senator from the south since Reconstruction. (Haley, who felt threatened by Scott’s popularity inside the GOP, didn’t contact him for nine days after the seat became vacant; she then invited him to dinner and asked if they could announce his appointment the next morning. “It was zero to 60 at the speed of a Tesla,” Scott recalled.)

Perhaps most important, she abandoned her many smaller fights to focus on the great task before her: luring industry to South Carolina. It was in this role, as chief salesperson for her state, that Haley truly excelled. Her cutthroat pursuit of international business, hopping on flights to Europe with hours’ notice to make a personal pitch to some board or CEO, endeared her to longtime adversaries in Columbia. When Haley left the governorship, 400,000 more people were employed in South Carolina than when she took office. This period of economic boom concealed many of the warts of her tenure—and highlighted yet another successful rebranding of Haley. “The truth is, Sanford was very ideological, always worried about the budget and taking these unpopular stands,” said Byars, the longtime GOP consultant and friend of Haley’s. “Nikki tried that, and it didn’t work. So, she wanted to be a jobs governor.”

Some took a more cynical view. “Nikki is willing to do whatever she needs to do and be whoever she needs to be,” said Lee Bright, a longtime archconservative in the statehouse. He earned an “A+” on Haley’s inaugural report cards and received her endorsement when he ran for Senate in 2012, but the two had an ugly falling out during her governorship. He added, “The fact is, she doesn’t have a core. Adapting to the electorate is what keeps you around in politics, and she’s done it more effectively than anyone I’ve ever seen. She went from being an enemy of the establishment to being the face of the establishment.”

Bright cited sharp disagreements with Haley on spending, subsidies and accepting federal funds, issues on which she contradicted her past positions. (The governor wound up signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, a document she criticized early in her career.) But her greatest apostasy, in his eyes, was the defining act of Haley’s career.

III. A Time for Choosing

On June 17, 2015, a white supremacist walked into the historic Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston and sat with a group of Black worshippers who invited him to join their Bible study. He then executed nine of them, including the church’s pastor, state Senator Clementa Pinckney. Alerted to the news of a mass shooting at the church, Haley immediately called Pinckney, whom she believed was in Columbia for the legislative session. A short time later, she learned why he hadn’t picked up.

It became clear almost instantaneously that South Carolina was in for another nasty fight over the Confederate Flag. Haley was not, at first, keen on tackling a controversy that had cost one of her predecessors his job. But when photos surfaced of the assassin posing with a Confederate flag and boasting of his efforts to start a race war, Haley decided—without input from a single adviser, colleague or friend—the flag needed to go.

The governor couldn’t afford to inflame tensions. Nor did she want to appear opportunistic for doing what was obviously the right thing. “If I had come out and said, ‘The flag is hatred. It’s racist. Shame on you for wanting to keep it up’—yeah, it would have made me look like a superstar, but it wouldn’t have done a service for the people that I was trying to serve,” Haley told me. “I had to be respectful in the way I communicated with them. I had to not be a threat. I had to do it in a way so that they were making the decision, not me.”

HALEY ON THE CONFEDERATE FLAG

“I lived my life trying not to judge people because I know what it’s like to be judged. So, if you want me to go say that certain people are bad, I’m not going to do it. Because there are some of my friends who still do respect the Confederate flag. And there are some of my friends who think it’s a horrible thing. I’m not going to pick any of those friends over the others.”

But it was Haley’s decision—and it wasn’t a comfortable one. For all the flowery talk of how far South Carolina had come, with an Indian-American governor and a Black senator, the truth is that both Haley and Tim Scott knew they were expected to toe the line on behalf of their very white, very conservative base. But she also knew that history was calling upon her. For whatever her modulations on policy issues, this was a tragedy striking at the heart of who Haley had always been, an outsider in a hostile environment, the brown girl in Bamberg who never felt like she belonged.

Acting on the raw instincts that had always animated her, Haley called in every favor she had, enlisting allies from Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The governor orchestrated a swarming pressure campaign to force the legislature to vote to permanently remove the Confederate Flag from the state capitol grounds.

“I was in the room when she hauled legislators in, to make her final appeal on the flag, and it was one of the most extraordinary moments I’d ever witnessed in my life,” recalled Matt Moore, who was then the state GOP chairman. “People somehow think now that it was fait accompli to bring that flag down, but all the way up until that moment, I thought the vote was going to fail. The House leadership told Nikki that their members didn’t want to go through with it. And Nikki put all of her political capital on the line. She leaned on them hard. She told them, ‘If you vote for this and get attacked for it, I will come to your district and campaign for you personally.’”

According to several lawmakers who pledged their support to Haley, what persuaded them finally was listening to her story of the police and the highway fruit stand. The pain she felt as a little girl, she told them, should never be inflicted on any Black child driving past the capitol of their state.

“I think the Nikki Haley we all know as governor and ambassador—it was out of misery and challenges that she became triumphant,” Scott told me. “And she shepherded our state through its misery with a graciousness and a gentleness that you don’t see in public servants.”

“She will never get the credit she deserves for leading that charge,” Davis, the state senator, said. “In retrospect, some people think it was easy, but it was the hardest fight I had ever seen. That flag would have never come down without Nikki Haley.”

To the cynic, watching Haley’s national reputation soar in the summer of 2015, it was proof of her cunning: She had manipulated a tragedy for political gain. “She never had a problem with the flag, but all of a sudden after the shooting, she has some reminiscence of being a child and being mistreated?” Bright grumbled. “It’s all political with her.”

The truth was just the opposite. After years of casting about, searching for her identity and her purpose in a party that was antagonistic to people like her, Haley had found it. Republicans were overdue for a reckoning on race, and she was ready to arrange it.

Haley had dabbled in these debates before. When running for governor, she started every speech by declaring, “I am the proud daughter of Indian parents who reminded us every day how blessed we are to live in this country,” a preemptive way to neutralize whispers about everything from her faith to her dad’s turban. In early 2013, after appointing Scott to the U.S. Senate, Haley scoffed at the national party’s failure to reach minority voters. “The Republican Party has always been very good at saying, ‘We include everyone,’ but they’ve never taken time to show it,” Haley told me at the time. “When have they ever gone to a minority community and said, ‘What do you care about? We’re a better country because you’re in it.’”

And yet, Haley had been smart enough and sufficiently self-aware to not push much harder. She intuitively understood that Republicans weren’t ready to have those hard conversations. Haley believed that had changed after Charleston, because Charleston had changed her. Friends told me how she lost a dangerous amount of weight in the weeks following the shooting as she blitzed the legislature over the flag, visited with affected families and quietly attended all nine funerals. Haley’s career to that point had been marked by moments of inauthenticity, but this was not one of them. Everyone around her could see that something was permanently altered in her political DNA.

“I had always been amazed at her ability to handle whatever came her way,” said Carie Mager, who served as a bridesmaid in Haley’s wedding. “But the Charleston shooting nearly broke her.”

‘WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO THIS WOMAN?’

It is through this prism that the following year of Haley’s life should be understood. Watching the ascent of Donald Trump, whose candidacy was fueled by the ostracizing of Mexicans, Muslims and outsiders of every sort, Haley felt personally offended. She also felt obligated to act. Asked to give the Republican response to Obama’s 2016 State of the Union address, Haley raised eyebrows by needling the GOP frontrunner. “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices,” Haley told the nation. “We must resist that temptation. No one who is willing to work hard, abide by our laws and love our traditions should ever feel unwelcome in this country.”

Haley had been pleased with the diverse, talented slate of Republican candidates—led by her old friend, Jeb Bush—and was confident that one of them would be able to slay the dragon of Trump. By the time of her nationally televised speech in January 2016, however, Haley had lost any such confidence. Trump was bullying his way to the GOP nomination. Watching him finish a close second in Iowa, then annihilate the field in New Hampshire, Haley knew that the third primary contest, in her South Carolina, represented a last stand.

Her endorsement was both highly coveted and highly unlikely. Republicans universally expected that Haley would remain neutral out of respect for an old friend. Because Bush’s campaign was on life support, there was no reason for Haley to throw away her political capital endorsing him. Bush understood that. But he also knew Haley shared his disgust with Trump: Over a long dinner at the governor’s mansion, days after the New Hampshire primary, the two aired their grievances about the reality show candidate. Bush was the most unglued Haley had ever seen him, flailing his arms, red in the face, visibly degraded.

Bush would have been all the angrier had he known Haley had other dinner guests planned.

HALEY ON ADVERSITY

“Every challenge that I’ve ever gone through—every person that’s ever stabbed me in the back, every feeling of being isolated—all of those made me who I am and made me better.”

Secretly, in the days after the New Hampshire primary, Haley’s team reached out to both the Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio camps. Each candidate was invited to have dinner with the governor and bring their spouse and one staffer. Haley didn’t really know Cruz, but he was everything she had expected—awkward, insincere. Over a painfully long dinner, the Texas senator recited line after line from his stump speech. When she asked Cruz, near the end of the dinner, what he would want his legacy to be as president, he responded, “I want to be remembered as the president who repealed every word of Obamacare.” When the senator left, Haley and her staff burst into laughter.

Haley wasn’t acquainted with Rubio, either. What she did know, she didn’t like: The guys leading the Florida senator’s campaign, including manager Terry Sullivan, had run Barrett’s race against her in 2010. (Haley’s political consigliere, Jon Lerner, made it clear when he extended the invitation that Rubio should not bring Sullivan to the dinner.) When Rubio and his wife arrived at the governor’s mansion, they were asked into a reception area for refreshments. Except Rubio didn’t show up. For the next 10 minutes, as the senator’s wife made small talk with Haley and her husband, the candidate himself was nowhere to be found. As it turned out, he was still in the foyer, yakking it up with Haley’s butler about sports and other topics. When the folks in the reception area caught wind of what was holding Rubio up, Haley’s staffers worried she might be offended. But she was positively charmed.

Haley and Rubio bonded like long lost relatives. Over the course of several hours, they compared notes on experiences in their respective state legislatures. They talked about their young children. They marveled at the similarities in their life stories: both children of immigrants with humble beginnings, both evangelists for the American Dream, both viscerally disturbed by Trump’s animus toward people like them. By the time dessert was served, Haley made it clear she would throw her support behind Rubio. But she added a caveat. “I will campaign all across South Carolina with you. I will do whatever it takes to help you beat Donald Trump. But I only ask one thing,” Haley told Rubio. “I never want to be in the same room as Terry Sullivan.”

Rubio agreed. Then, immediately upon leaving the governor’s mansion, he got his campaign manager and other senior staff on the phone. There were whoops of elation on the other end of the line; Haley’s endorsement would come as a shock so close to the South Carolina primary, and maybe, just maybe, it could help them carry the state and arrest Trump’s momentum. After the celebration died down, Rubio informed them of Haley’s ground rule. The line fell silent. “What the hell did you do to this woman?” Rubio asked Sullivan.

(The next day, Haley phoned Bush to inform him that she would be endorsing Rubio—his former pupil in Florida—and not him. Several people close to Bush described the call as the low point of his campaign; he hung up incredulously after Haley explained that her priority, more than rewarding friendship, was stopping Trump. Their relationship has never recovered.)

In the 72 hours before South Carolina’s primary, Haley helped Rubio put on a rock concert across the state. The two of them were joined at events by Tim Scott, who had also endorsed Rubio. Here was the future of Republicanism—an Indian-American governor, a Black senator, a Cuban-American presidential candidate—joining forces to fight back against a frontrunner who was race-baiting and hate-mongering his way to the party’s nomination for president. Haley took this mission especially personally. “I wanted somebody,” she declared when endorsing Rubio, “that was going to go and show my parents that the best decision they ever made was coming to America.”

It didn’t do much good: Trump romped by double digits in the South Carolina primary, establishing himself as the overwhelming favorite in the race. At this point, Haley’s staff counseled her with caution. Trump was emerging as the inevitable Republican nominee. Continuing to promote Rubio at his expense, and sticking to policy contrasts, was one thing. But going after Trump personally, they told her, could prove ruinous to her career. Haley said she understood. But under the bright lights, she became incorrigible. She mocked his failed business ventures. She razzed him for not releasing his tax returns. She accused him of being “everything we teach our kids not to do in kindergarten.”

Most notably, Haley excoriated Trump for failing to denounce Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. “We saw and looked at true hate in the eyes last year in Charleston,” Haley told an Atlanta crowd just before Super Tuesday. “I will not stop until we fight a man that chooses not to disavow the KKK. That is not a part of our party. That is not who we want as president.”

After bathing in a raucous ovation that lasted 25 seconds, Haley added, “That is not who our Republican Party is. That’s not who America is. When my parents came here, they came here because they knew there was love and acceptance in this country.”

Two weeks later, Rubio was out of the race, Trump had a stranglehold on the party of Lincoln and Haley was left to grapple with her decisions. She had been dogged for years by a reputation for saying and doing what was expedient. Now, she was being punished for singing the animating notes of her political soul. The governor’s approval rating among Republicans continued to slide. Powerful Republicans in Columbia whispered that her career was over.

What hit particularly hard: Haley’s lieutenant governor, Henry McMaster, had been the first statewide officeholder in Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina to endorse Trump. Once rivals for governor in 2010, Haley and McMaster had become friends. She hired several of his former staffers and was happy to see him elected lieutenant governor in 2014. But the two had a dramatic rupture early in his tenure; when McMaster, who presided over the Senate, refused to rule on a parliamentary question the way Haley ordered, she rushed to Facebook and wrote a statement upbraiding him. It was a reckless and wildly disproportionate move, one that permanently soured their relationship.

When people describe Haley as lucky, it’s because of this: McMaster is the one who unwittingly rescued Haley’s career.

She kept her head down after Trump won the nomination. When her friend, vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, asked her to introduce him at the 2016 convention, Haley made clear she would not pay tribute to Trump on national television, and after some back-and-forth, angered Pence’s staff by ultimately declining. Her determination to stay above the fray extended to “Access Hollywood” weekend, when many GOP leaders questioned whether Trump should quit the race. (Haley had the good fortune, friends joke, of having a hurricane hit South Carolina that weekend.)

On Election Day 2016, Haley, much like then-House Speaker Paul Ryan and a number of other Republicans who’d been outspoken Trump critics, expected to have their objections vindicated. Instead, Trump won the presidency, leaving Haley in a state of shock. When a friend texted her in dismay, Haley replied, “Cheer up. We just won the governor’s races in Vermont, Indiana and North Dakota.” Gallows humor aside, Haley was dazed. She had been preparing to campaign as the face of the post-Trump GOP—with bookings on “The Today Show” the morning after Election Day, and “Meet the Press” that Sunday—but now it was futile. She canceled the bookings.

To say Haley was a long shot to join the Trump administration would be inaccurate. She had no shot whatsoever. The president-elect remembered her ad hominem insults during the primary campaign, and was heard more than once referring to Haley as “a bitch.” Unlike other Republicans who had attacked him—Rick Perry, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul—Haley had not apologized or come to kiss his ring. Trump had no use for her, ignoring the pleas of Pence to consider her for a prominent role.

And then, a few days after the election, Trump called McMaster. He was prepared to give him almost any position in government that he desired. “Henry, what do you want?” the president-elect asked. “Name it.”

McMaster told Trump he didn’t want to join the administration. He wanted to be governor. “That’s it?” Trump replied. “Well, that should be easy. You’re already the lieutenant governor!”

Explaining that it wasn’t that simple, McMaster decided to communicate more directly. “I need Nikki Haley out of the way,” McMaster told Trump. “I want you to find any job she will take.”

‘WE CAN’T GET OUR SHIT TOGETHER’

Watching as Haley headlined Trump rallies in Pennsylvania the week before Election Day, I was struck by the fine line she was already walking.

The first draft of her presidential stump speech was coming along nicely. She would tell of how, when Trump asked her to become his ambassador to the United Nations, she told him there were three conditions.

“I said, ‘Well, I’ve been a governor; I don’t want to work for anybody else. I would want to work directly with you. So, it would need to be a cabinet position.’ And he said, ‘Done. What else?’

“I said, ‘Well, I’m a policy girl, so I want to be in the room when decisions are made. So, I need to be on the National Security Council.’ And he said, ‘Done. What else?’

“I said, ‘Well, I’m not going to be a wallflower or a talking head. I need to be able to say what I think.’ And he said, ‘Nikki, that’s exactly why I want you to do this.’ And he was true to his word from the first day to the last day.’”

After the cheers died down, she would nod waggishly to the president’s callowness—“He can always be interesting!”—and build to a real crowd-pleaser, telling how Trump came to the U.N. during an impasse with North Korea over its nuclear capacities, and, despite her misgivings, denounced Kim Jong-Un as “little rocket man.” Not long after the speech, she would add with a mischievous grin, the prime minister of Uganda asked her, “So, Madam Ambassador, what are we going to do about this little rocket man?” With the crowd roaring, Haley would conclude, “His name-calling has gone international!”

The crux of Haley’s speech was an argument that U.S. foreign policy had been the unsung success story of the past four years; that America had deterred North Korea, bankrupted Iran, confronted China and defended Israel. But the subtext wasn’t simply that Trump had overshadowed these accomplishments with his brutish behavior. The subtext was that it didn’t need to be this way—that diplomacy and decency are not mutually exclusive.

Friends of Haley say she was genuinely surprised, upon joining the administration and immersing herself in the realm of geopolitics, at how often her instincts aligned with Trump’s. (“On his policy, I agree with everything that he’s done,” she told me in one interview, an assertion she walked back only slightly when I mentioned deliberate family separation at the southern border.) Perhaps this owes to some shared traits: reflexive distrust of strangers, personal and political insecurity, a patronage approach to relationships. Danny Danon, who served alongside Haley as Israel’s ambassador, remembers being “shocked” at her idea to host a dinner for diplomats—and not invite those who voted against America’s position at the U.N. “The European representatives were really upset,” Danon told me. “But for her, that was the point—there were going to be consequences if you didn’t show your support.”

HALEY ON THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

“We’ve lost seven out of the last eight popular vote elections. That doesn’t mean there’s something right with them. That means there’s something wrong with us. We’ve got to fix it.”

Of course, this shouldn’t be confused for a comprehensive foreign-policy framework. Haley struck up a relationship with famed diplomat Henry Kissinger while in New York, going to his club for monthly lunches and hosting him at her apartment for dinner on several occasions. When I pressed Kissinger to describe the Haley Doctrine—to classify her views in the sweep of modern U.S. foreign policy—he took a long pause. “I think I’d rather not get into that question. It’s a very good question, and it’s a question I’d like to answer for myself at some point.”

Whatever her alignment with Trump’s ideas, Haley found herself increasingly annoyed by the president’s inability to get out of his own way. The more she came to subscribe to a Trumpian view of international affairs—punishing disloyalty, practicing transactionalism—the more she came to resent her boss for his petty distractions and self-defeating antics. This formed a thematic spine for Haley’s second book, With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace, which published a year after her exit from the White House. Not much reading between the lines was necessary. Haley’s theory: You can be tough without being truculent; you can be a nationalist without being a nativist; you can get results without getting on Twitter.

“I hope the Republican Party will leave the anger and focus on the policy and communication going forward and really build us to what I know we can be,” she told me. “We’re not perfect. We’ve got to fix things. Let’s fix them. Let’s keep going. But what I don’t want is for us to look distracted in the eyes of China and Russia, because I know what they do when we’re distracted.”

“We look pretty distracted right now, don’t we?” I asked.

“When I was at the U.N., it killed me,” Haley replied. “I could not even stomach it when the government shut down [in 2019]. And I was not at the U.N. at that point. When it shut down and I looked at that Security Council chamber and I saw ambassadors and their staffs there—and I saw the American ambassador with no staff—do you know what that says to the world? That we can’t get our shit together.”

This is the essence of Haley’s presidential pitch—that she can help America get its shit together. Her belief in herself is almost as strong as her conviction that the people running this country are out of their depth. When I asked Haley whether she thought she could do the job of president, she replied with startling speed, “Yeah, of course I do.”

‘I DON’T TRUST’

This self-confidence isn’t a revelation to anyone in Trump’s orbit.

Despite being 230 miles from the White House, she made no secret of her opinion that Trump’s government was being run into the ground by incompetent egomaniacs. Haley would sneak into Washington unannounced and find an audience with the president, over the objections of people like John Kelly and Rex Tillerson, pleading a case separate from theirs. She would backchannel with foreign governments—and with U.S. officials—in a manner that made her appear the de facto secretary of state, which caused Tillerson to vent on more than a few occasions about “that bitch.” (Tillerson declined to comment for this story; John Bolton, who also came to detest Haley during their time in the administration, wrote in his memoir about Trump telling him the story of Tillerson calling Haley “nothing but a c---” to her face.)

That Haley was one of few high-ranking women in an administration that was at times cartoonishly misogynistic did not win her many friends. And given that this 40-something woman was new to the national security world—her only foreign policy experience coming from pitching tax subsidies to German automakers—Haley’s cockiness was bound to put a target on her back. But what made Haley so hated was that she played the game better than they did. No one else in the administration could get away with being so privately critical of Trump while never appearing publicly to be at odds with him. Unlike Kelly and Tillerson and others, Haley never felt the need to plot behind Trump’s back because she knew he would listen to her.

“Some people approached their job from the perspective of wanting to control outcomes,” H.R. McMaster (no relation to Henry), who served as Trump’s national security adviser, told me. “I think that in the case of serving a very disruptive—maybe the most unconventional president in American history—there were some people who wanted to try to control the president’s decisions. And they got confused about who owns foreign policy.”

McMaster, a retired four-star general, became one of Haley’s few allies in the administration. He said what set her apart was an embrace of some “unconventional” arguments that broke from the consensus on the National Security Council—including his own positions—and her advocacy of positions that were closer to Trump’s. “She understood what her role was and that’s what made her effective,” McMaster said. “That’s also what ruffled some feathers.”

Some of the most disheveled feathers could be found inside the vice president’s office. Once, Mike Pence had been a friend of Haley’s, even a confidante. The former governors could speak candidly about White House drama and coordinate messages. But tensions surfaced in year two, owing to a certain wariness some of the vice president’s team felt watching Haley operate. While Pence was stuck cleaning up messes in D.C.—or, more often, denying there was any mess at all—she was winning a glut of glowing media reviews, hosting exclusive salons and charming big donors at her Manhattan apartment, all while owning the Israel issue in ways no Republican could dream of.

The likelihood of a Pence-Haley primary fight in 2024 had long been murmured about inside the West Wing. When Haley resigned, keeping her head down for all of five minutes before she began maneuvering toward a future run, the vice president’s team went on high alert. Things escalated permanently when Nick Ayers, the longtime Haley adviser who spent 2017 and 2018 serving as Pence’s chief of staff, followed her out the door following the midterm elections, turning down the top job of White House chief of staff—and making it known that he would be with Haley, not Pence, in 2024. (Ayers’ protégé, strategist Austin Chambers, is said to be the leading candidate to be her campaign manager. Haley’s team denied this and both Ayers and Chambers declined to comment.)

A bad situation got much worse in the middle of 2019, when the president began speculating—first in small conversations and then loosely in front of larger audiences—about the prospect of replacing Pence with Haley on the 2020 ticket. Haley was more popular than his vice president, Trump would say, and she could do wonders for his deficits with suburban women. Then, in July of 2019, both Pence and Haley were invited to address a megadonor retreat in Aspen, Colorado. To the surprise of some attendees, the U.N. ambassador was given the better slot, delivering a keynote dinner address, while the vice president spoke at breakfast the next morning. Marc Short, a staunch Pence loyalist who replaced Ayers as chief of staff, viewed this as an act of war. He believed Haley’s team was looking for ways to upstage the vice president. According to multiple people familiar with their discussions, Short warned Pence that Haley was coming for him. (Both men declined to comment for this story.)

None of this is especially surprising given her long history of making political enemies. Everyone who has ever run against Haley has wound up alienated from her. And everyone who is considering a run against Haley—from her home state senator, Tim Scott, to the Trump-era diplomat who outranked her, Mike Pompeo—knows exactly what they’d be getting themselves into: She is as charming as she is cold-blooded, the sort of politician other politicians love to hate. “I kick with a smile,” she told me, nodding knowingly. “I’ve always kicked with a smile.”

Haley said she’s not intimidated by the potential ugliness of a presidential race: “If you can get through South Carolina, you can get through anything, because it is literally the most brutal battlefield you’ll ever face.” But that theory will be tested. Wait until the old affair rumors come roaring back to life. Wait until the photos of her pilgrimage to a Sikh temple in India—clad in ritualistic attire, with a head cover and red bindi on her forehead—go viral on far-right websites. Wait until the once-fringe elements of the GOP that are now very much mainstream begin spinning conspiracies about who she is and where she’s from and what her real plans are.

HALEY ON THE STATE OF THE GOP

“This is rock bottom. We’ve lost the House, we’ve lost the Senate, we’ve lost the White House, we had one of the worst days in modern history. … I’m frustrated that we are in this place, but I am not going to let this define the Republican party.”

Nothing will be off-limits. Haley is hyped by donors principally because they see her working magic with suburban women, reconnecting the party with a demographic that Trump drove away. But Haley’s gender will almost certainly be used against her—perhaps in unexpected ways. (Corey Lewandowski, the former Trump campaign manager, has been overheard advising South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem to run against Haley as “the hotter, Trumpier, real American governor.”)

Meanwhile, Haley has fewer loyalists to protect her than ever before. Tim Pearson, who won renown for his management of Haley’s gubernatorial campaigns, and spent years as her top aide, is no longer inside the circle. The reason? Haley blew up after learning that Pearson was secretly dating her assistant—something she viewed as a breach of trust, even though the two are now married and have a child. Haley knows her paranoia is a problem—“I don’t trust, because I’ve never been given a reason to trust”—but there’s really no solving it.

Perhaps the greatest threat to Haley is Fox News after dark. There is a reason she went on Laura Ingraham’s show on January 25—a few weeks after blaming Trump for the siege of the Capitol—and said we should “give the man a break.” (This was my latest Haley-induced whiplash; it made, by my count, three distinct stances on Trump in the span of six weeks.) She has never had personal relationships with Fox’s stars the way other Republicans do. When Tucker Carlson went after Haley last summer—responding to her empathetic remarks about George Floyd’s murder by declaring, “What Nikki Haley does best is moral blackmail”—the entire 2024 field took notice. Carlson has clearly taken a disliking to Haley. What happens if he, or Sean Hannity, or some combination of these and other right-wing voices, make it their mission to take her down?

Haley rolled her eyes when I asked about Carlson. “I’ve dealt with people like him all my life,” she said. Haley didn’t elaborate, but she didn’t need to. She’s dealt with men, white men, race-baiting white men, all her life. This campaign, she implied, wouldn’t be any different.

But it could be. There is a path of least resistance that Haley could yet pursue. No matter her passion in denouncing the president during our January 12 interview, no matter her certainty that he was crippled and the party was moving on without him, there is still time for Haley to recover. A campaign launch is two years off. She can work to rekindle that warm relationship with Trump, persuading him and his family that she got carried away. She can pretend that Marjorie Taylor Greene is just another harmless GOP backbencher. She can cozy up to the heavyweights at Fox News and convince them to pull their punches. She can pour her time and energy into denouncing those damned socialists in the Democratic Party, carrying forth as the partisan warrior queen, crossing her fingers and hoping that everyone from the redhats to the Republican National Committee members forget her momentary lapse.

Or she can say what she wants to say. She can cast her lot with Liz Cheney. She can campaign as herself. She can prove—once and for all—that her parents made the right choice by coming to the United States of America.

Hoping for a hint, I asked Haley on January 12: Does she still consider Trump a friend?

“Friend,” she answered, “is a loose term.”

(B) POLITICO Playbook PM: Trump snubs Haley

By TARA PALMERI, ELI OKUN and GARRETT ROSS 02/18/2021 12:45 PM EST

SCOOP: NIKKI HALEY reached out to former President DONALD TRUMP on Wednesday to request a sit-down at Mar-a-Lago, but a source familiar tells Playbook that he turned her down. The two haven’t spoken since the insurrection on Jan. 6, when Haley blasted Trump for inciting his supporters to storm the Capitol.

The snub comes on the heels of Tim Alberta’s deep dive in POLITICO Magazine last week on Haley’s presidential ambitions and how she’s trying to have it both ways with Trump.

Channeling George Costanza in mid-December, Haley refused to confront Trump over his election lies because he believed they were true. “I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged,” Haley told Alberta. “This is not him making it up.”

After Jan. 6, Haley changed her tune.

“I think he’s going to find himself further and further isolated,” Haley said of the defeated president. “I think his business is suffering at this point. I think he’s lost any sort of political viability he was going to have. I think he’s lost his social media, which meant the world to him. I mean, I think he’s lost the things that really could have kept him moving.”

And: “I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”

Haley tried to recover Thursday with a damage-control op-ed in the WSJ wrapped in blame-the-media rhetoric. But Trump, apparently, isn’t having it.

Haley reps didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

LET THEM EAT SNOW — “Barbs fly at Ted Cruz for heading to Cancun as millions in Texas freeze without power,” Dallas Morning News: “As 3 million Texans shivered in the dark, Sen. Ted Cruz jetted off to Cancun with his family, outed instantly by fellow vacationers and berated by critics for abandoning constituents during an epic statewide power crisis.

“Social media photos from Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport and aboard the flight to the sun-drenched beach resort sprouted Wednesday evening. By Thursday, when temperatures along the Mexico’s Caribbean coast were on track to hit 83 degrees, the pile-on was at full boil.” (Just like Texans’ no-longer-potable water.) … On-flight photo

MEANWHILE … NBC’S @gabegutierrez: “ERCOT officials just said the Texas power grid was seconds or minutes — not hours — away from catastrophic failure if rolling outages had not been imposed starting Sunday night.”

Speaker NANCY PELOSI at her weekly news conference said the House Energy and Commerce Committee will look into the power crisis in Texas. She also said her daughter’s family in Houston lost power and water but is OK.

Pelosi said the House is hoping to bring the Covid relief bill to the floor for a vote by the end of next week, and that there is ongoing communication with the Senate about “what the Byrd rule will allow.”

Asked about the Biden administration’s immigration legislation, Pelosi said it would not necessarily need to go through reconciliation and that a piecemeal approach is a possibility. “How it happens through the legislative process remains to be seen.” 1:13 clip

Pelosi also said the commission investigating the incidents of Jan. 6 should have subpoena power.

2022 WATCH — “Ivanka Trump will not run against Marco Rubio for one of Florida's Senate seats,” by NYT’s Maggie Haberman: “‘Marco did speak with Ivanka a few weeks ago,’ said Nick Iacovella, a spokesman for Mr. Rubio. ‘Ivanka offered her support for Marco’s re-election. They had a great talk.’

“A person close to Ms. Trump also confirmed the conversation, and said that a Senate run was never something she was seriously considering. The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose private discussions, said that Mr. Rubio’s office had asked Ms. Trump to hold off on making clear she was not running until April, when they hoped to hold a joint event with her.”

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – from Politico

The Christian Prophets Who Say Trump Is Coming Again

In the growing community of charismatic Christian prophecy, faith in Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House is a new dividing line.

By JULIA DUIN 02/18/2021 04:30 AM EST

Julia Duin is a reporter in Seattle who specializes in religion.

Perched on a cream-colored armchair, Johnny Enlow, a 61-year-old, California-based Pentecostal pastor with short-cropped gray hair, a trim beard and Tom Selleck-style mustache, looked into the camera and prophesied that Donald Trump would become president again.

Not in 2024. In 2021.

“The January 20 inauguration date doesn’t really mean anything,” Enlow said in the January 29 video, which has gotten north of 100,000 views on YouTube. According to Enlow, more than 100 other “credible” Christian prophets around the world had likewise declared that Trump, somehow, would be restored to power soon.

Indeed, Enlow was not alone out on that limb. Greg Locke, a Nashville pastor with a massive social media following, said after Trump’s loss that he would “100 percent remain president of the United States for another term.” Kat Kerr, a pink-haired preacher from Jacksonville, Florida, declared repeatedly last month that Trump had won the election “by a landslide” and that God had told her he would serve for eight years. In his video, Enlow went further. “There’s not going to be just Trump coming back,” he said. “There’s going to be at least two more Trumps that will be in office in some way.” Donald Trump, he proclaimed elsewhere, was “the primary government leader on Planet Earth.”

Enlow, Locke and Kerr are among dozens of Christian prophets in America—religious leaders with followings among Pentecostal and charismatic Christians who claim the ability to predict the future based on dreams, visions and other supernatural phenomena. Some prophets are church leaders, while others operate independently. There are no official requirements for prophet status, though followers generally expect prophets to get at least a few prophecies right.

But, lately, that standard has come under duress—particularly when it comes to Donald Trump.

In 2015, spurred by the lengthy prophecy of a 27-year-old wunderkind named Jeremiah Johnson, many Pentecostals and charismatics embraced the idea that God had chosen Trump to restore America’s Christian moorings. Trump’s surprise win in 2016 offered a dramatic validation, and in 2020 dozens of prophets declared that he would win election again. This time, they were wrong. Yet, in the wake of Joe Biden’s victory, instead of apologizing or backtracking, a number of prophets continue to assert that it is God’s will for Trump to be in the White House and that a miraculous reversal is nigh. Enlow, who did not respond to a request for comment for this article, has said Trump’s victory will be made clear by March.

With only two-thirds of voters—and one-third of Republicans—expressing confidence that Biden won a free and fair election, many observers worry that these prophets are sowing more confusion, blurring the line between misinformation and religious proclamation. They are spreading their message to wide audiences—some preachers who amplify these prophecies have followings in the millions—that increasingly exist in an echo chamber of like-minded religious YouTube channels, Instagram feeds and websites such as ElijahList, host of the YouTube channel ElijahStreams, where Enlow’s video aired.

It’s well known that Trump received strong support from white evangelicals in the 2020 election; estimates hover around 80 percent. But the role that prophecy plays in that support might be underexplored. In a survey conducted last year, two political scientists found that nearly half of America’s church-attending white Protestants believed Trump was anointed by God to be president—a portion of the population that other scholars have dubbed “prophecy voters.” The share is likely higher among charismatic Christians, who skew more politically and theologically conservative than evangelicals as a whole. And although this population is only a subset of American Christianity, it’s a large one: Some estimates hold that as many as 65 million Americans could be counted as Pentecostals or charismatics.

Not all prophets have doubled down on their Trump prophecies since the election, however. And as some have backed away from Trump, a schism has emerged. At least six recognized prophets who initially predicted a Trump reelection have acknowledged those prophecies were wrong. They now say they are deeply troubled by their peers’ refusal to acknowledge the same—and worry that allegiance to Trump could threaten the prophetic tradition itself.

In a December 15 article, Michael Brown, a longtime charismatic revivalist and scholar in Charlotte, North Carolina, had sharp words, warning co-religionists: “There is no reality in which Trump actually did win but in fact didn’t win. … To entertain possibilities like this is to mock the integrity of prophecy and to make us charismatics look like total fools.” After apologizing on January 7 for his own prophecy that Trump would be reelected, Jeremiah Johnson called parts of the prophetic movement “deeply sick.” In early February, he released a new YouTube series called “I Was Wrong: Donald Trump and the Prophetic Controversy.”

“I believe that this election cycle has revealed how desperately we need reformation in the prophetic movement,” Johnson said in a February 8 video. “I have serious concerns for the charismatic-prophetic world that if we do not wake up, if we do not humble ourselves, there is greater judgment to come.”

The emerging rift mirrors the one in the GOP, with one faction trying to move on from Trump in the name of democratic principles, and the other redoubling their commitment to him, spurred by the grassroots and in defiance of facts. Johnson and other prophets in his camp have received fervent pushback from their followers. But Brown and his ilk believe a reckoning is in order—that false prophets must be held accountable and that reforms are needed if the prophecy movement is to retain any spiritual integrity. He has begun convening monthly Zoom calls with prophetic leaders to discuss a way forward.

“This has opened the door to outright delusion,” Brown said in an interview. “As a full-blooded charismatic, I’ll say we’ve earned the world’s mockery for our foolishness.”

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Although common in biblical times, Christian prophecy largely fell into disuse for almost two millennia. It has a scriptural tradition: In his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul describes prophecy as one of the Holy Spirit’s gifts for believers. The contemporary version was revived, along with the better-known gifts of healing and speaking in tongues, at a Pentecostal prayer meeting in Topeka, Kansas, in 1901. Over time, the Pentecostal movement—joined in the 1960s by like-minded followers in mainline Protestant and Catholic circles known as “charismatics”—has become the world’s fastest-growing form of Christianity, with an estimated half a billion believers around the globe.

Pentecostal worship tends to be more decentralized than the more formal mainline denominations, and many charismatic churches are completely independent. In the late 1980s, when the “Kansas City prophets,” a group of Pentecostal-charismatic leaders based in the Missouri suburbs, came out with controversial claims of supernatural visions and prophecies of future events—like a billion people becoming Christian almost overnight and hospitals being emptied of their sick patients—there was no governing body to rein them in. Concerns about accountability led to the formation in 1999 of the Apostolic Council of Prophetic Elders, a group of about 32 people tasked with quality control.

But many of the prophetic voices that emerged after the creation of the ACPE formed their own ministries and networks, and the council gradually lost influence. “The entire prophetic and prayer movement expanded with the digital age,” James Goll, a Nashville-based prophet who was part of the Kansas City group, said in an interview. “So, one might ask, is there accountability on these new platforms?”

Political prophecies are a relatively recent phenomenon. Televangelist Pat Robertson, who ran for president as a Republican in 1988, occasionally prophesied everything from wars to Earth-destroying asteroids, but it was Trump who gave the movement a political focal point. Trump is seen by some charismatic Christians as chosen by God in spite of his faults. Prophets have said as far back as 2007 that the then-real estate mogul would eventually land in the White House. In 2011, a retired Orlando firefighter-turned-prophet named Mark Taylor predicted Trump would be elected in 2012. (After Trump decided not to run, a few prophets predicted, incorrectly as it turned out, that Mitt Romney would win.)

Once Trump announced his candidacy in 2015, more prophets, led by Johnson, predicted his win. Published in Charisma magazine, Johnson’s July 2015, prophecy—that Trump would be a latter-day Cyrus, modeled after the 6th-century B.C. Persian king who allowed Babylonian Jews to return to their homeland—was heavily criticized by some evangelical leaders, who pointed out that Trump had never been known to be a serious Christian, and had a personal history of divorces and extramarital affairs. (Johnson himself wrote that Trump was “like a bull in a china shop” who would disturb some people’s “sense of peace and tranquility.”) Many evangelicals still preferred other Republican candidates. Yet Trump’s prophetic fan club did not budge. Taylor not only updated his original prophecy to say Trump would win in 2016, but also said Trump would appoint three Supreme Court justices, an outcome that seemed only a distant possibility back then.

After Trump’s unexpected victory against Hillary Clinton, the new president welcomed Christian leaders who had been early supporters into the halls of power. Kerr led a six-minute blessing over Trump during his inaugural prayer breakfast in 2017. (She later prophesied that not only would Trump have two consecutive terms—so would former Vice President Mike Pence.) Most notable was Paula White-Cain, Trump’s spiritual adviser for more than a decade who recruited several Pentecostal leaders for his evangelical advisory board.

Trump’s wooing of evangelicals and charismatics made for “a veritable flood” of favorable prophecies during his presidency, in Brown’s words. They ranged from Australian prophet Lana Vawser’s May 2017 vision of Jesus clothing Trump with a purple robe and crown, to Enlow’s February 2020 assertion that the victory by the Kansas City Chiefs over the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl that year had prophetic significance for, among other things, the fact that “Trump is God-sent” and is advancing “a Kingdom agenda.” (Enlow is one of several prophets who believe God speaks through major sports events.)

In a 2020 book, James Beverley, a research professor at Tyndale University in Toronto, tracked more than 500 prophecies about Trump by more than 100 prophets over a 15-year period, and found a low batting average for accuracy. “My research,” Beverley told me, “shows that the prophecies are usually vague, sometimes totally wrong, and, with rare exception, have failed to be properly critical of Trump.”

Nonetheless, Trump rewarded his Pentecostal supporters with photo ops in the Oval Office and visits to their churches, including one this past October in Las Vegas, where leaders prophesied, to a cheering crowd, that Trump would win a second term. “The Lord spoke to me and said, ‘I am going to give your president a second wind,’” senior associate pastor Denise Goulet said as Trump, standing in the crowd, beamed and spread out his arms in an I-told-you-so gesture.

Some observers argue the prophecies at times were an attempt to curry favor with a powerful political figure and movement. “What were they getting in return?” asks Chris Rosebrough, a theologian and Lutheran pastor on the Minnesota-North Dakota state line who monitors prophets on his Pirate Christian Radio broadcasts. “They had direct access to him and ability to influence decisions Trump was making. The real story was in the power, influence and access.”

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On November 7, the day Biden was declared the president-elect, one prophet, Kris Vallotton, of the mega-congregation Bethel Church in Redding, California, notably apologized. “I take full responsibility for being wrong,” he said on Instagram. “There was no excuse for it. I think it doesn’t make me a false prophet, but it does actually create a credibility gap.”

But dozens of Pentecostal prophets dug in, insisting, even after the Electoral College vote certifying Biden’s win, that Trump would still be inaugurated.

In addition to Kerr, Enlow and Locke, there was South Carolina prophet Dutch Sheets, who announced a seven-state “prayer tour” to sites where the votes were being contested. “We believe we can win this battle,” he said. Jeff Jansen, a Murfreesboro, Tennessee, prophet, appeared on ElijahStreams to echo Enlow’s prophecy of a Trump dynasty. “The last Trump will be Barron,” Jansen said. “He is going to be one of the greatest presidents of the United States.”

According to local media reports and social media feeds, a handful of prophets traveled to Washington for Trump’s speech on January 6. They included North Carolina evangelist Charlie Shamp, who tweeted a photo of himself just below the steps where crowds were storming the Capitol and produced a video about the experience. “Don’t let the media lie to you,” Shamp later wrote, from a Twitter account that has since been deleted. (He has moved to Parler.) “We peacefully assembled outside the building to voice our protest against this fraudulent election and pray for America!”

Within a day of the Capitol insurrection, a few other prophets who had prophesied a Trump win apologized: Johnson, as well as California pastor Shawn Bolz and Denver pastor Loren Sandford. Johnson published a long explanation, saying he had “misinterpreted” dreams and wished to “repent and ask your forgiveness.”

“I do not blame God’s people for insufficient prayer that resulted in Donald Trump’s losing the election, nor do I blame any kind of election fraud,” he wrote. “I am simply convinced God Himself removed him and there was nothing that any human being could have done about it.”

Blowback was swift. A few days later, Johnson wrote on Facebook that he had received “multiple death threats and thousands upon thousands of emails from Christians saying the nastiest and most vulgar things I have ever heard toward my family and ministry.” He also said he was losing financial support “every hour and counting.” (Johnson declined an interview request made through Brown, a mentor.)

“He lost a lot of monthly support,” Brown told me. “He said people were unsubscribing from his email list at such a high rate, it crashed his server.”

A few more apologies followed. Vallotton, who had retracted his apology after hearing from “thousands” of angry followers, reinstated it on January 8. Talk show host Sid Roth, as well as Jennifer LeClaire, the former editor of Charisma magazine (whose publisher, Stephen Strang, predicted that Trump would top 400 electors), also apologized, with LeClaire writing: “I believe some prophets who prophesied a Trump win never heard God at all. They merely tapped into the popular prophetic opinion because it was what so many in the church wanted to hear.”

Comments like these have prompted discussions around the charismatic world on podcasts, email threads, Twitter and Facebook. The overriding emotion in reading them is anger at the prophets—in some cases, for making false declarations and, in other cases, for apologizing for those declarations. Brown told me pastors have reached out to him asking how to handle the fallout in their congregations. Goll used words like “toxic,” “mudslinging,” “disappointment” and “disillusion” to describe the flood of invective from Christians who feel duped by false prophecies. But a sizable share of believers, at least those active online, seem to be holding out for a Trump resurrection sometime this spring.

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That has left prophets like Johnson and LeClaire calling on Pentecostal and charismatic Christians to rethink what prophecy should and should not be in the 21st century. So far, they and other movement leaders have opted to address false prophets privately. “Some people are spoken to and don’t respond. Some people respond quickly,” Goll says.

That’s not enough for Rosebrough, who doesn’t see the movement reforming itself unless it can call out false prophets by name. “There are never any efforts to validate any of the claims made,” he says. “The more outrageous the claims, the truer it has to be. And if you are critical of these things, God will curse you as opposing his prophets.” (On February 11, Enlow hit back, slamming the would-be reformers with a statement titled “An Apostolic Rebuke and Entreaty for Those Blaming the Prophets.”)

Beverley, the Tyndale University professor, worries the widespread fidelity to Trump prophecies is part of a broader embrace of conspiratorial thinking in America. In a new book, he links the prophetic movement to the far-right QAnon conspiracy: Leaders of both, he says, have said all along that Trump would win and continue to push the idea that this will happen in March. Beverly, however, believes the charismatic prophets are likely to move on if nothing happens at that point.

But Brown is not counting on it. On February 8, he and Brooklyn pastor Joseph Mattera began organizing secret monthly meetings over Zoom with a new confederation of 20 prophetic leaders, representing various streams of the movement across ethnic, racial and denominational lines. Their aim is to set up guidelines for public prophecies and requirements for accountability. One idea: The group could demand that anyone who wants its imprimatur needs to sign on to certain rules. Those who don’t “will be left out of our circles,” as Brown puts it.

Yet even Brown admits these measures will go only so far, given the extent to which the evangelical church has become entwined with Trump’s strain of politics. “How did we become so politicized?” he wonders. “How did so many of us end up with an almost a cultlike devotion to a leader, compromise our ethics for a seat at the table and drape the Gospel in an American flag?”

ATTACHMENT ONE – from

ATTACHMENT ONE – from