It’s hard to select from the numerous photos of Apostle to the President of the United States Pence looking worshipfully at Donald Trump as if he was the Second Coming. This is the one I used for a diary from Sept. 30, 2019 about Trump becoming so impaired Pence had to take over as acting president.
Of course Trump didn’t have a severe psychotic episode and Pence continued to gaze at him with that cockeyed stare and goofy grin in his frozen face, perhaps believing that the president’s resilience to unraveling irrevocably under stress proved he was no mere mortal.
In December, 2018 we had this prediction from Heath “Digby” Parton:
What's behind Mike Pence's stony visage? Trump may plan to dump him for Nikki Haley
Back then she wrote:
The Trump advisers who brought him his polling no doubt understand that these people are in the bag for 2020. But if they want to win they have to figure out a way to bring back some of those non-evangelical women who are abandoning the Republican Party in droves. In that respect, maybe putting Nikki Haley on the ticket makes some sense.
If people are talking about this to the press you can be sure Pence knows about this scuttlebutt too. So does Pence's fair-haired boy, Nick Ayers, which may be informing his decision to spend more time with his money. That faraway look in the veep's eye may be the look of someone who's trying to come to terms with the fact that he's just another in a long line of Donald Trump's castoffs who have been used, abused and left with nothing.
This is from an OpEd by Michelle Cottle in The NY Times on Mar. 11, 2019:
It’s tempting to dismiss Ms. Haley — who is thought to harbor presidential ambitions — as an opportunist trying to sound high-minded while still remaining in the good graces of Mr. Trump and, more important, of the Republican voters who adore him. In recent interviews, she has struggled to at once criticize and rationalize some of Mr. Trump’s more outrageous behavior. For instance, she told CBS that, while she considered it “not appropriate” when the president told four Democratic congresswomen, three of them born in the United States, to “go back” to their home countries, she said she could “appreciate where he was coming from” in his frustration with their criticisms.
Ms. Haley has also staked out a dubious defense of the president in the impeachment investigation. “So, do I think it’s not good practice to talk to foreign governments about investigating Americans? Yes,” she told The Washington Post. “Do I think the president did something that warrants impeachment? No, because the aid flowed. And, in turn, the Ukrainians didn’t follow up with the investigation.”
As Ms. Haley sees it, the president may have tried to subvert national security for his own political end, but he failed, so where’s the harm?
Fast forward to today:
CNN Analyst Predicts The Exact Date Trump Will Dump Pence From The Ticket
“That’s the date (July 16, 2020) the Democrat gives her or his acceptance address,” Begala said on Monday. “On that day, to interrupt that narrative, Donald Trump will call a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.”
And that’s when Pence will be toast.
“He’s going to dump Mike Pence and put Nikki Haley on the ticket to try to get those suburban moms,” Begala said. “You watch. Guaranteed.”
Trump has already laid the groundwork for dismissing Pence.
“Trump put Pence in charge of coronavirus to throw him under the bus,” Begala said.
This is the article in The Jerusalem Post
They include the denial from Nikki Haley plus an Israeli perspective:
However, Haley has heavily refuted speculations that she will replace Pence in November.
"There is no truth whatsoever that I would ever in any way look to get that position," Haley told Fox and Friends. "I think Mike is great for that job and I think that he's the right partner for the president."
Haley focused her two-year tenure at the UN combating hostility toward the Jewish state and was praised by its leaders for her “strength” and “leadership” in the face of widespread anti-Israel bias there.
Haley has acknowledged “disagreements” with the president in the past on several policy matters, writing a response to a New York Times op-ed on an internal “resistance” against Trump’s worst behaviors that irked the president.
In that article, Haley said she expresses her disapproval with Trump directly to him.
There are a couple of questions I think Trump will have to consider if he does dump Pence in favor of Nikki Haley because polls show this will benefit him running against a Democratic ticket that is likely to include a woman vice presidential choice. One is whether he will forgive and/or forget that she was critical of him both in public and private in the past. If she actually confronted him face-to-face he may not feel replacing a compliant man with an assertive woman. Another is what his comfort level is with having a running mate who clear is far more qualified to be president than he is. In other words, will she be Handmaid Haley or the Vice President from Hell?
Further comments in two illustrations: