Nikki Haley's Anti-Trans Rhetoric Falls Flat in New Hampshire

The 2024 presidential contender veered hard into Fox News territory at a Wednesday campaign event. It didn’t go well.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/2024-gop-presidential-candidate-nikki-haleys-anti-trans-dylan-mulvaney-rhetoric-falls-flat-in-new-hampshire



MANCHESTER, New Hampshire—When Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley stepped onstage Wednesday morning at a campaign event at Saint Anselm College, she had a question for the crowd. "Everybody know about Dylan Mulvaney?” Haley asked. “Bud Light? That is a guy, dressed as a girl, making fun of women.”

To the GOP’s hardcore base, Dylan Mulvaney needs no introduction. The transgender content creator who partnered with Budweiser has been the target of vicious attacks and sustained indignation for weeks, largely thanks to a seemingly endless stream of segments on Fox News.

But in the crowd at Saint Anselm College’s “Politics & Eggs” event, packed with New Hampshire’s famously independent voters, this anti-transgender broadside was not met with applause but silence. Voters in the room appeared largely unaware of the Bud Light controversy. When Haley waited for applause, they didn’t clap.

It wasn’t the only moment during Haley’s stop at the seminal New Hampshire campaign event when her conservative culture war messaging seemed out of place. Earlier in her stump speech, for instance, Haley declared she was “unapologetically pro-life,” a staple GOP applause line that received a muted response from the crowd.

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