The recent First Loser debate featured an absolute blow to Nikki Haley’s chances. This comes right after Haley had gotten $500,000 from the Wall Street people who do not want PDJT to be anywhere near the White House.
This was one of the best moments — if not the very best — in the history of American political debates.
Dr. Tom Woods has his usual incisive commentary.
Here’s Vivek Ramaswamy from last night:
Foreign policy experience is not the same as foreign policy wisdom. I want everybody at home to know that I was the first person to say: we need a reasonable peace deal in Ukraine. Now, a lot of the neocons are quietly coming along to that position, with the exceptions of Nikki Haley and Joe Biden, who still support this, what I believe is pointless war in Ukraine.
And I think those with “foreign policy experience” — one thing that Joe Biden and Nikki Haley have in common is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in eastern Ukraine that they want to send our troops to actually fight for. Look at that. [He’s asking the audience to look at Haley’s blank expression.] This is what I want people to understand. These people have — I mean, she has no idea what the hell the names of those provinces are, but she wants to send our sons and daughters and our troops and our military equipment to go fight it.
So reject this myth that they’ve been selling you, that somebody had a cup-of-coffee stint at the UN and then makes 8 million bucks after, has real foreign policy experience. It takes an outsider to see this. Look at the blank expression. She doesn’t know the names of the provinces.
Ramaswamy is absolutely right about Haley. Haley was the governor of South Carolina before Trump tapped her for the UN post. She had very little if any foreign policy experience as governor. What did she accomplish while at the UN? All of the deals that we saw executed during the Trump administration came from work deep inside PDJT’s administration. Haley was just a pleasant to look at person representing America at the UN.
Dr. Woods goes on.
Matt Walsh is absolutely right: this was a gamble. “People don’t appreciate what a risky maneuver this was by Vivek,” Walsh wrote. “If Haley names three on the spot, it immediately turns into a crushing embarrassment for him and probably ends his campaign. But he wagered that she wouldn’t be able to do it, and he was right. Extremely well played.”
It was a brutal demolition. Chris Christie claimed to be outraged that Vivek had questioned Haley’s intelligence, but that’s precisely what was so beautiful about it: Vivek showed that the so-called serious people in the room, who with their vaunted “foreign policy experience” always want more foreign intervention, are intellectual lightweights, almost every single time.
Of course, Chris Christie would feign outrage. His job in these debates is to prop up the corrupt establishment in Washington.
Understanding geopolitics takes more than a pretty face. We need intellectual heavyweights in Washington. We need people who will understand the nuances of foreign entanglements. We need people who will not just parrot the talking points of the neocons.
Vivek also lit into Haley for how she curiously went from bankruptcy to multimillionaire status, and laid out various corrupt dealings she’d had. “This is a woman who will send kids to die so she can buy a bigger house,” he said.
Well done!