You knew it was coming.
As soon as former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley emerged as the main threat to Donald Trump in the battle for the Republican nomination, it became inevitable that she would be targeted by him. Any front-runner would do the same thing. But Trump did it with his typical touch.
Last week Trump reposted on his Truth Social account a conspiracy theory that Haley, who was born in South Carolina, was not qualified to be president because her parents, born in India, were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment establishes that any person born on American soil is a citizen of the United States and therefore can serve as president.
…
By Friday the former president of the United States was referring to Haley as “Nimbra.”
There are two things to know in order to understand what’s unfolding. The first is that Haley’s given name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. She has gone by Nikki since she was a child—a local newspaper referred to her as Nikki when she was 12 years old and she had a role in a production of Li’l Abner; and she dropped her maiden name when she married Michael Haley in 1996.
True, but the level that it is at now goes past Nixon. This is legitimate John Birch Society stuff. And the Birchers used to be laughed at even by most Republicans.
Reagan started normalizing them and it’s continued from there.
“I’m a faithful follower of Brother John Birch and I belong to the Antioch Baptist Church, and I ain’t even got a garage, you can call and ask my wife.”
–Charlie Daniels
The line was spoken by a green toothed hillbilly in a song he wrote. He was making fun of these types and painted them as drunk hicks.
For reference, 15 years later he had a song (the second part to this song, funny enough) that did its best to make fun of half the queer community.