As the race for the Republicans’ presidential nomination unfolded, Donald Trump largely ignored former Ambassador Nikki Haley. The South Carolina Republican wasn’t a serious enough threat for the former president to attack her.
But as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ support faded, and Haley climbed, Trump decided in the fall it was time to start deriding her, too. The likely GOP nominee even settled on a nickname: He started calling Haley “birdbrain.”
It was a curious moniker. The former ambassador has a great many flaws, but she does not have a reputation for being dumb. Nevertheless, the former president apparently couldn’t think of a better smear at the time, so he stuck with “birdbrain” for a while.
That is, until Trump decided to take his offensive in a far uglier direction.
Last week, the leading GOP candidate used his social media platform to promote an article that falsely claimed that Haley is ineligible for the presidency because her parents were not U.S. citizens when she was born. This didn’t make any sense — Haley was born in the United States, and under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, that makes her a natural-born citizen — but Trump apparently didn’t care.
He’s long relied on “birther” attacks — against Barack Obama, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Kamala Harris — so it wasn’t especially surprising to see Trump add Haley to his list.
It was a sign of things to come. Haley, the child of Indian immigrants, has a given name of Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. With this in mind, Trump earlier this week started calling the former ambassador “Nimrada” — a likely deliberate misspelling combining “Nimarata” and “Nimrod.” (The former president continues to display the temperament of an ill-tempered tween.)
This morning, Trump, in a missive ostensibly directed at New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, called Haley “Nimbra” — three times.
As The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake explained in an analysis this week, the familiarity of…
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