Former President Donald Trump suggested on Friday that his Republican primary opponent Nikki Haley will not be his pick for vice president.
Last month, CBS News reported that multiple sources told the network Trump was asking some of his allies what they thought about him picking the former South Carolina governor as his running mate. Rumors of a Trump-Haley ticket for 2024 were all but shut down by Trump on Friday night, however.
At a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, Trump told the crowd of his supporters that Haley “is okay, but she is not presidential timber.”
“And when I say that, that probably means she is not going to be chosen as the vice president,” the GOP frontrunner added to the applause of the crowd.
Trump says Nikki Haley is "not presidential timber":
"That probably means that she's not gonna be chosen as the vice president." pic.twitter.com/FUZj4kwHBC
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 20, 2024
Earlier in the day on Friday, Haley reportedly told some of her supporters that being vice president is “off the table.”
“I’ve said from the very beginning: I don’t play for second. I don’t want to be anybody’s vice president. That is off the table,” she said, according to POLITICO.
The comments from Trump and Haley came as both candidates prepare for the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire on Tuesday. The New Hampshire primary appears to be Haley’s best chance for an early upset of the former president, but she still sits 16 points behind Trump in the polls, according to the Real Clear Politics average.
Trump ran away with the Iowa caucuses earlier this week, posting a nearly 30-point victory over second-place Ron DeSantis. Trump took 98 of the state’s 99 counties and won over 50% of the vote. Haley finished third, behind DeSantis, garnering 19% of the vote.
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In his 2016 run for the White House, Trump waited until he had secured the nomination to pick his VP, tapping Mike Pence as his running mate just a few days before the Republican Party convention. The 2024 GOP convention starts on July 15 and will go through July 18 in Milwaukee.
At his campaign event on Friday, Trump picked up another endorsement — this one from Haley’s fellow South Carolinian, Sen. Tim Scott. Scott’s endorsement of Trump comes a month before South Carolina’s primary, where Trump stands as the clear leader in the polls.
“We need a president who will close our southern border today,” said Scott. “We need Donald Trump. We need a president who will unite our country. We need Donald Trump. We need a president who will protect your Social Security and my mama’s Social Security. We need Donald Trump, who will stop the crime and recklessness in the streets. We need a president who will restore law and order. We need a president who will lower taxes and not raise our taxes.”