One Haley who isn't afraid to let insults fly

Although Nikki Haley has run a fairly positive campaign until recently, she has faced brutal criticism from Donald J. Trump and others around him. Her 22-year-old son, Nalin Haley, is not so inclined to throw punches.

Mr. Haley, who has become a better-known presence on the trail with his mother, introduced her at events over the weekend, taking some sharp jabs at her former Republican rivals.

He has a nickname for Senator Tim Scott: Senator Judas. Another former rival who went all out for Mr. Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy, draws (derogatory) comparisons of Mr. Haley to Pennywise, the clown from “It.”

For her part, Ms. Haley was respectful: At one event, she went through the thank you notes for the other speakers before jokingly saying, “Nalin, I'll catch up with you later.”

When he introduced his mother in Gilbert, S.C., on Saturday, he acknowledged that he was in “the state I was raised in,” and “the state that took a chance on my mother.” The current moment, he said, was “like history repeating itself – it feels like 2004, 2010, with the establishment rising against it,” he said.

Then he got personal.

“A lot of them went to New Hampshire, and I saw Trump standing side by side, standing next to Senator Judas – excuse me, Senator Scott,” he said to “oohs” from the audience. “Ouch,” said someone from the audience.

(Ms. Haley appointed Mr. Scott to the Senate in 2012 when she was governor of South Carolina, and Mr. Scott is now a key surrogate for Mr. Trump in their home state.)

Although Mr. Scott has not responded to the shot, Nathan Brand, a spokesman for the senator, said, “You would never hear Ms. Frances or anyone in the Scott family talk like that,” referring to Mr. Scott's mother, Frances. Scott.

In the early months of his mother's campaign, Mr. Haley was relatively neutral, largely sharing messages from or positive commentary about the Haley campaign. Every now and then he went out with her, playing games at the Iowa State Fair and attending debates.

But his tone changed significantly after the third debate, when Mr. Ramaswamy, the technology entrepreneur who was then still in the running, mentioned Ms. Haley's daughter on the debate stage as a way to criticize Ms. Haley's position on TikTok.

“Vivague Ramaslimey is receding more than his receding hairline,” Mr. Haley said wrote on Xreposting a comment calling Mr Ramaswamy's comments 'despicable'.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Haley continued: He posted a photo by Mr. Ramaswamy next to an image of Pennywise, next to the caption: “Someone help me figure out the difference I'm having trouble with.”

On stage Tuesday in Summerville, S.C., he echoed those comments. “My mother had a conversation with me and I thought: you know what? “I feel terrible and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Pennywise,” he said. “Because Pennywise is a lot less creepy, a lot less of a clown, and he has a much better hairline than he does.”

A spokeswoman for Mr Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, responded to the insults, saying: “In most cases of campaign banter I give credit where credit is due, but in this case I hope he can develop his trash-talk arsenal to to add something to it. that's a bit funny.”

Compared to her rivals, not to mention the army of trolls supporting Trump, Ms. Haley's Internet operation has been rudimentary. She has been critical of social media platforms – at one point calling for all social media accounts to be “name verified” – and has stayed true to traditional outreach: posting images of its events and occasionally video recording 'get out and vote' questions. .

But Mr. Haley, a senior at Villanova University, was game to hit back at her rivals on social media platforms with memes and jokes.

In December, while Ms. Haley often sparred with Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Haley spoke up wrote on X that Mr. DeSantis “wants to be Trump so bad it's embarrassing.”

And in January, he replied to a long message from Mr. Trump, who declared that anyone who supported Ms. Haley would be “permanently excluded from the MAGA camp,” saying, “In that case, he should be 'excluded from MAGA' because he is our biggest fundraiser to date done with this post!”

His light-hearted comments about the tree stump go beyond insults. In Gilbert, he recalled how Mrs. Haley, during her run for governor, offered him and his sister a quarter for every hand they shook. “Fourteen years later I'm back – not because I get paid, because I don't, but because we have serious problems in this country,” he said.

Mrs. Haley has praised her adult children's presence on the trail, telling reporters in Elgin, S.C., that now that her husband is deployed overseas, “they're really trying to go the extra mile where they can, and I'm proud of that .”

Ms. Haley's campaign declined to arrange for Mr. Haley to participate in an interview.

But in January, after helping collect registration cards for the Iowa caucus, he told The New York Times that his mother had always let him and his sister participate in her campaigns as often as they wanted. He said she was aware they were in the public eye and wanted them to “live as normal a life as possible.”

“She has always been a mother first,” he said.

Jasmine Ulloa reporting contributed.