Nikki Haley has been called “a moderate Republican who is likely to run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024.” While some disagree, calling her “an extremist on Israel, Iran, and human rights,” being painted as a moderate has been beneficial to her career.
As South Carolina’s governor she took her time before agreeing to have the Confederate flag removed from flying on a flagpole by the State Capitol, but ensured it had a place inside. She served as Donald Trump‘s U.S. Ambassador to the UN but at times ensured a perception of distance between them, like criticizing Russia when Trump refused.
And she promised that she would not run against Trump.
That promise appears to have had a limited shelf life.
Monday night, Haley headlined the Christians United for Israel Summit, a conference held by CUFI’s founder, John Hagee, a well-known far-right extremist evangelical pastor.
After her speech Haley took to Twitter to imply not only a White House run, but that she will be the next President.
Attacking any potential Biden deal to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, a deal her former boss once exited, Haley tweeted: “And if this president signs any sort of deal, I’ll make you a promise… The next President will shred it – on her first day in office.”
That tweet catapulted her to “trending” on Twitter.
In recent years in opinion pages from CBS News to Religion News Service to Haaretz, Hagee has been blasted for antisemitic remarks.
He’s been called “a Muslim-hating, antisemitic, annexationist extremist,” who is “no friend of Israel.”
His Christians United for Israel summit, the same one Haley headlined, in 2008 was called “Rapture Ready” by The Nation’s Max Blumenthal, who warned of Hagee’s “long record of anti-Semitic statements.”
In 2019 Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb wrote: “Anyone who actually listens to CUFI’s leader, the Rev. John Hagee, will be horrified at the meeting’s toxic blend of anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and sexism.”
“Hagee and his more than 5 million followers believe that the establishment of Israel in 1948 and its subsequent military occupation and colonization of Palestinian and other Arab lands are the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the necessary precursors to the return of Jesus Christ and the coming of the apocalypse.”
Indeed, Hagee has allegedly claimed Hitler was a descendent of “accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews,” while blaming them for their own persecution – including for the Holocaust – while reportedly attacking Hitler as “a spiritual leader in the Catholic Church.”
Monday night, Haley praised Pastor Hagee, whose remarks have been so toxic Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008 was forced to renounce Hagee’s endorsement.
Religion News Service in 2008 reported that “Hagee drew the ire of the nation’s largest Jewish movement for a 1990s sermon that reportedly suggested that God used Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust as part of a divine plan to have Jews return to Israel.”
CNN reported Hagee’s remarks that forced McCain to renounce his endorsement included saying, “God says in Jeremiah 16: ‘Behold, I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave to their fathers. … Behold, I will send for many fishers, and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them.’ That would be the Jews. … Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter.”
Haley Monday night declared “America and Israel’s best days are yet to come!” as she thanked Pastor Hagee for inviting her to speak.