Haley aide blasts Kari Lake with Meghan McCain phrase
Senate candidate Kari Lake got blasted again with “No peace, b----!” and this time it didn’t come from Meghan McCain.
Lake, a Republican running for the seat held by the retiring Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., started the social-media brawl Wednesday with a broadside at former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who until Wednesday was the last GOP primary rival to former President Donald Trump.
Lake, a Trump-endorsed loyalist of the former president’s, wrote on X that there were reports that “Nimrata Haley will suspend her campaign today after more humiliating, landslide (losses) on Super Tuesday.”
Nikki Haley’s first name is spelled “Nimarata.” Other users on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, immediately accused Lake of racism for using a misspelled version of Haley’s name instead of Nikki, her middle name that she goes by. Haley’s parents were immigrants from India. Trump also has tried to make fun of Haley’s name.
Haley’s campaign communications director, Nachama Soloveichik, fired back with “no peace, b----,” the phrase McCain used on Lake after she tried to reach out to make peace with the late Sen. John McCain’s family. McCain rejected Lake’s claims that her previous attacks on her father were meant in jest.
McCain endorsed Solveichik’s use of her phrase by responding Wednesday with “Amazing” and a laughing face emoji.
Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, in a reply to Lake defended Haley’s first name as “quite ... beautiful.”
“But, like former president Trump, you use it in a prejudicial manner to make her seem foreign. That’s wrong. It’s un-Christian and un-American. It appeals to the worst in us,” George wrote.
Others pointed to the comment as another example of Lake going out of her way to alienate more moderate elements of the Republican Party.
Lake’s likely Democratic opponent in the Senate race, Rep. Ruben Gallego, DAriz., also chimed into the conversation on social media. Opposite to Lake’s approach, he welcomed Haley supporters and called Lake “divisive” and “extreme.”
“This is who Kari Lake is,” Gallego wrote on X about Lake’s swipe at Haley. “We ... need everyone on board to defeat Kari Lake’s extremism.”
On Tuesday, McCain took to social media again to comment on Arizona’s Senate race. She expressed her disappointment at Sinema’s decision to not run for reelection. McCain said she has voted for Sinema and would do so again.
“America and Arizona is worse off without Senator Sinema in office,” McCain said on X.
For her part, Lake on Tuesday did not back off her past attacks on John McCain, despite previously saying they were meant as jokes.
“I think John McCain was an incredible veteran, but I think there’s no politician on Capitol Hill, past, present, or future, that should be free from scrutiny,” she told a CNN correspondent.