Nikki Haley warns Trump ‘can’t win a general election’

Republican presidential contender Nikki Haley said Monday that frontrunner candidate and former boss Donald Trump will never win the 2024 general election.

“We can’t have, as Republicans, him as the nominee. He can’t win a general election. That’s the problem. We’ve got to go and have someone who can actually win,” Haley told CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

But she said she will ultimately back Trump if he becomes the GOP standard bearer, despite her concerns about his chance at success.

“I would support him because I am not going to have a President Kamala Harris,” said Haley, 51, referring to the vice president, who is next in line to the White House should something happen to 80-year-old President Biden.

“We can’t afford that,” said Haley, the US ambassador to the UN under ex-President Trump. “That is not going to happen.”

Trump, 77, has a yawning 33.3 point lead over the 2024 GOP field, while Haley is in a distant fifth place in the latest RealClearPolitics average of polls.

Haley insists it’s still very early.

“This is a marathon, it’s not a sprint,” she said Monday. “We’re just getting started. This will really start to shake up post-Labor Day,” she said.

The former South Carolina governor also highlighted Trump’s mounting legal predicaments when discussing the weakness of his candidacy.

“There’s probably going to be a fourth indictment,” she speculated.

Trump was hit with a 34-count Manhattan indictment unsealed in April for alleged falsification of business records to cover up damaging stories such as the Stormy Daniels affair.

In June, he was separately arraigned on 37 counts for his alleged hoarding of highly sensitive national security documents and obstruction of justice. A trial date in that case has been set for May 20, 2024.

Last week, Trump confirmed that he is also under scrutiny from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s probe on his activity involving the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and coinciding efforts to allegedly thwart the 2020 election.

In addition, Trump is believed to be a key person in the Fulton County investigation about whether crimes were committed to undercut the 2020 election in Georgia.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to reveal more on that next month.

Trump has vehemently denied wrongdoing on all fronts and decried many of the investigations as a “witch hunt” and the allegations as a “hoax.”

He took to his Twitter-like platform Truth Social on Sunday to air his grievances about his legal turmoil in a fiery tirade.

“Every time you see these Radical Lunatics and their partners in the Fake News Media talking about the ‘Trials and Tribulations’ of President Donald J. Trump, please remember that it is all a coordinated HOAX… in order to STEAL ANOTHER ELECTION through PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT at levels never seen before in the U.S.” he posted. 

Yet as his legal woes pile up, Trump’s polling numbers among Republicans appear to have only strengthened.

He has foreshadowed that in a hypothetical second term in office, he will engage in deep staffing reforms to various agencies.