Steve Bannon's Dire Warning on a Potential Nikki Haley Vice Presidency

Conservative media personality and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has issued a dire warning about Republican presidential nominee Nikki Haley potentially joining former President Donald Trump’s ticket in the 2024 general election.

Trump is the current GOP frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election.

Haley, a former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, has been gaining traction among voters, coming neck and neck with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the second-place Republican candidate in the polls. Amid Haley’s increased popularity, people have thrown around the idea of her being Trump’s running mate if the former president wins the primaries.

Meanwhile, Bannon, who served as Trump’s chief strategist in the early days of his administration and currently hosts a conservative podcast called War Room, recently warned against Haley joining a potential Trump ticket and predicted that if Haley was vice president in a second Trump administration, it would “fail.”

In an interview with Jack Posobiec, senior editor for conservative news site Human Events, Bannon said, “We’re going to have a big fight, it will take place in the spring. They’re going to try to force Nikki [Haley] on the ticket.”

Former President Donald Trump announces that he has accepted the resignation of Nikki Haley as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, in the Oval Office on October 9, 2018, in Washington, D.C. Steve Bannon has issued a dire warning about Haley potentially joining Trump’s ticket in the 2024 general election.
Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Bannon explained in the interview posted on Monday, “They’ll say Trump needs a woman. Nikki on the ticket. She balances things and she can bring together that 15 percent of Never Trumpers in the Republican Party. We’re gonna have to have that fight.”

The conservative podcast host thinks Haley would exert too much power as vice president.

“If Nikki Haley is in this administration, in any capacity, it will fail. She’s a viper. She’s a viper. And once she gets in there, she’ll try to run it as prime minister. She’ll try to be Dick Cheney. Her to Trump will be just like Dick Cheney to Bush,” Bannon said.

Newsweek reached out to Haley and Trump’s campaigns via email, as well as to Bannon via phone for comment.

Dick Cheney, who served as George W. Bush’s vice president from 2001 to 2009, was called “the most powerful vice president that we’ve ever had,” by Joel Goldstein, author of the 1982 book The Modern American Vice Presidency, as cited in a 2009 article by NPR.

Cheney was instrumental in Bush’s decision to go to war with Iraq following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. carried out by Al-Qaeda, an Islamist militant group.

Bannon isn’t the only Trump ally opposed to having Haley as the former president’s running mate.

Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., said on Newsmax on Thursday that he would “go to great lengths to make sure” Haley does not join his father’s campaign. Meanwhile, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in a December interview with conservative political commentator Tim Pool, “I would advocate against it as strongly as I could,” referring to a Trump-Haley ticket.

When asked at a campaign event in Lebanon, New Hampshire, on Thursday if Haley would accept an offer to be Trump’s vice president, the Republican candidate avoided a straightforward answer and said, in part, “If you want to talk about vice president, I will tell you this now: I’ve said it before—I don’t play for second. I’ve never played for second. I’m not going to start now.”