Nikki Haley Makes SNL Appearance and Republican Voters Have Thoughts

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has been looking for ways to move up in the primary race against former President Donald Trump as they are moving closer to the South Carolina primary, and she’s still some 30 points behind. She came in third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire after everyone else dropped out. If she loses South Carolina, people are going to call the race done even if she stays in since that’s where one might expect her to do the best — in her home state. But right now, South Carolina is leaning heavily toward Trump. 

Haley tried the approach of sharing “fan letters,” but that didn’t go over well when people accused her of faking the letters after she posted an alleged email that apparently hadn’t been sent and another letter with what looked like digital font. Then she posted new letters, and people still were skeptical of those. They noted that one letter didn’t exactly sound like it was from a Republican, among other questions, including saying he was a Washington Post reader and talking about the false canard of women not receiving equal pay. 

Given the way people were calling her out on social media, that doesn’t sound like that effort was making a lot of inroads in winning their votes. 

Haley then trotted out a new effort to appeal to voters by going on “Saturday Night Live.” But appearing on the notoriously liberal SNL is not exactly a sound approach for someone trying to appeal to Republican voters. 

It painted Trump as confused and anti-women. If you want to draw folks away from Trump, this probably isn’t the way to do it. Many found it cringey and not funny, and joking about Joe Biden and Donald Trump being “dead people” is probably not a good idea. Also, Trump is known for staying up late, so trying to make him into Biden by suggesting that he goes to bed early like Biden clearly does didn’t exactly work. The skit also seemed to mock people who lived on Staten Island, one place in New York City where you find a fair amount of Republicans. That’s also probably not a good idea if you want their vote.