The former president said that he and the former U.N. ambassador had reached a level of mutual verbal ferocity that rules her out from second in command.
As politicos debate who former President Donald J. Trump might choose as his running mate, a series of remarks in North Charleston sounded a little like a hint.
While President Trump has discounted former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley as a vice presidential pick before, his language on Feb. 14 about his chief competitor for the Republican presidential nomination was memorably definitive.
“She will never be running for vice president,” he told the crowd soon after opining that Ms. Haley and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “both stink.”
He argued that he and the former U.N. ambassador had reached a level of mutual verbal ferocity, particularly on his part, that would rule her out as vice president.
“I hope nobody wants her, because I think she’s absolutely terrible,” he added.
“I don’t think anybody’s very devastated. We do have a lot of great people, by the way,” the former president continued, before a shout he heard from the crowd led him to pivot to praise of Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.).
“He’s a modest person. I called him up, because he was defending me on ‘Deface the Nation,’” the former president began, using his typical satirical version of the name of the show “Face the Nation.”
“I watched him [Mr. Scott] the other day on the Sunday shows. He’s just destroying people for me! But he didn’t act that way for himself. And he said to me, ‘I find it harder to talk about myself than to something I believe in—something other than myself that I believe in.’ I thought it was beautiful, and I want to thank him,” President Trump said.
Mr. Scott is one of many names referenced in discussions of a possible vice president. But others, such as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), have often come ahead of him after Mr. Scott turned in a lackluster performance in the pre-primary presidential campaign season. His campaign received large donations from Oracle’s Larry Ellison, who also helped fund Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) unsuccessful 2016 campaign.
