Nikki Haley on Sunday scolded a pro-Trump actor for laughing at a photo of her posing with transgender icon Caitlyn Jenner.
The tweets: Haley, a 2024 GOP presidential hopeful, went out of her way to disagree with the little-noticed post by Dean Cain, a TV actor known for playing Superman and for backing former President Donald Trump.
- “Interesting. I don’t find it funny,” Haley replied, before sharing her vision of a diverse, and ostensibly transgenderism-accepting, Republican Party.
The reaction: The Twitter activism by Haley — formerly Trump’s U.N. ambassador and, before that, the governor of South Carolina — triggered disgust on the populist right.
“Nobody likes Nikki Haley,” observed activist-journalist Cassandra Fairbanks.
Others put the sentiment more strongly.
New York Post opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari said he would rather vote to reelect President Joe Biden than for Haley.
Pedro Gonzalez, a senior writer at American Greatness, suggested Haley’s tweet was a cynical attempt to appeal to less socially conservative voters.
Gonzalez unhappily predicted the GOP would “give up defending” against transgender activism to support Jenner’s newly announced campaign for governor of California as a Republican.
Meanwhile, Tom Nichols and other progressive commentators questioned Haley’s political acumen given the overwhelming Republican support for restrictions on transgender rights.
Last month, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem seemed to derail her own 2024 presidential ambitions when she partially vetoed a transgender sports ban in her state.
- Three other Republican governors have since faced conservative backlash for issuing similar vetoes amid a nationwide GOP push to limit transgender rights.
Haley, for her part, has yet to recover from publicly breaking with Trump following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The last word: Cain — who has previously criticized “intolerant” LGBT activists and pro-transgender legislation — on Monday defended himself from Haley.
- He claimed on Twitter to be old friends with Jenner and not to have laughed at the photo of her with Haley but rather at the wording of the tweet.
The tweet in question says: “If you could summarize the downfall of the [GOP] in one photo what would it look like? And why is it this photo?”
