Former White House director of strategic communications, Alyssa Farah Griffin, argued that former President Donald Trump's victory in South Carolina over Nikki Haley is far from a win for the GOP.
“Somebody who’s running as virtually an incumbent — Donald Trump — getting 60%, and 40% being against him? That’s not a mandate," Griffin, now a CNN political commentator, said during a Saturday panel for the network. "Especially with the entire Republican Party apparatus behind him, with most elected Republicans behind him.”
Griffin continued: “Now, it’s unclear what a path could look like for Nikki Haley. I think we’re all very open-eyed about that. But she is underscoring the fundamental weakness of Donald Trump, and it should be a five-alarm fire for the party, but for some reason, it is not.”
A recent Politico report similarly noted that with about three-quarters of the South Carolina primary votes tallied, around 40 percent of voters rejected Trump. Though the stat isn't an issue in the primary, as Politico noted, it could pose a threat to Trump's re-election campaign in a general election — exit polls found that he lost moderate and liberal voters to Haley by a large margin, while a little over 1 in 5 Republican voters said they would not vote for Trump in the presidential election, per AP VoteCast. “I’m an accountant. I know 40 percent is not 50 percent,” Haley said on Saturday. “But I also know 40 percent is not some tiny group. There are huge numbers of voters in our Republican primaries who are saying they want an alternative.”
Nikki Haley’s numbers in South Carolina are underscoring the fundamental weakness of Donald Trump “and it should be a five alarm fire for the party, but for some reason it is not.”
— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) February 25, 2024
Alyssa Farah Griffin ~ Former Trump WH Comms Director. pic.twitter.com/5oAQQdnBRa
