(CNN)President Joe Biden has been in office for just over a year, but former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has seen enough: She wants him to resign.
Analysis byย Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large
โHonestly, for the good of our country, if Biden loved our country, he would step down and take [Vice President] Kamala [Harris] with him,โย Haley told conservative pundit Guy Benson on Thursday. โBecause the foreign policy situation is beyond dangerous at this point.โ
Haley, who served as the UN ambassador during the Trump administration, has every right to raise questions about how Biden has handled foreign policy โ in particular the Russian buildup of troops on Ukraineโs eastern border.
But itโs a little more than rich โ and over the line โ for Haley to suggest that Bidenโs policies are so bad that they are badly endangering Americans, and that the only thing he can do is step down. Itโs particularly galling when you consider how the man Haley served under handled foreign policy.
Remember that Donald Trump told North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un โย via tweet!ย โ that โI too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!
โAnd that during a joint news conference with Vladimir Putin, Trumpย sided with the Russian leaderย over his own intelligence services when it came to Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
So, yeah. Last time I checked, Haley didnโt call on Trump to resign โfor the good of the countryโ when either of those things happened.
Whatโs going on here is simple: Haley wants to run for president โ if not in 2024, then at some point in the not-too-distant future. (She has already saidย she will not runย if Trump seeks the office again.
In order to best position herself for that bid, Haley is aggressively courting the Trumpists who compose much of the Republican base at the moment. And the best way to do that is to say outlandish stuff โ like that Biden, if he loved the country, should step aside. The more outlandish, the better.
