Donald Trump already has his first rival for the Republican primaries towards the 2024 presidential elections, and it is not exactly filler. Nikki Haley, born in South Carolina in 1972, to immigrant parents from India, ambassador to the United Nations for two years with Trump himself and governor of South Carolina between 2011 and 2017, plans to announce her candidacy on April 15. February, as implicitly advanced yesterday. In this way, she is ahead of what is usually considered the main potential competitor of the ultra leader, the no less extremist governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. The race looks tough.

Born Nimrata Nikki Randhawa, married under a double Sikh and Methodist ceremony and converted to Christianity at the age of 24, Haley is known for her chameleon-like ability and her personal approach to sometimes sensitive issues for Republicans, such as gender and the racism.

In December 2017, about to complete the first of two years in which she served as ambassador to the United Nations by Trump’s appointment, she said that women who had accused the president of groping them without their consent “should be heard.” It was not the first run-in she had with her then-her boss. Nor would it be the last.

Already in the campaign for the 2016 presidential primaries, when she supported the candidacy of Marco Rubio, Haley had firmly faced what she would later call – although not always and only intermittently – her “friend”. It was as a result of Trump’s refusal to answer questions about the leader of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), David Duke, when the shooting death, at the hands of a white supremacist, of nine African-Americans during a religious act in a Methodist church in Charleston, South Carolina. “We saw and looked the real thing in the eye last year in Charleston. I will not stop until we fight a man who chooses not to disown the KKK. He is not the person we want as president. That is not our party, and it is not the country my parents came to,” he said.

The then-governor had drawn national attention after that mass murder by signing legislation to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state capitol.

Haley would still give a few lurches for and against the Republican leader, whose performance in the assault on the Capitol he questioned from the outset and then fiercely opposed his dismissal or impeachment for that reason.

The then-thriving former governor assured at that time, in 2021, that if Trump were to run for re-election in 2024, she would not run. But then she turned around, and just a few days ago she came to say that she was willing to compete with him. She teased it in an interview with Fox, which she later replayed on Twitter with a summary of her message: “It’s time for a new generation. It is time for new leadership. And to take back our country. America is worth fighting for, and we’re just getting started.”

Haley announced yesterday the official announcement of his candidacy, without saying it explicitly but leaving no doubt about it, within two weeks. “My family and I have a big announcement to share with you on February 15! And yes, it’s definitely going to be a great day in South Carolina!” she wrote on Twitter.

Among other notables from the Republican Party who have suggested an alternative candidacy to Trump’s for 2024 are, in addition to Haley and DeSantis, the one who was his last vice president, Mike Pence; his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; the governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, or the senator Tim Scott.

In his first rally as also the first official presidential hopeful, Trump said last weekend that DeSantis would commit “a great act of disloyalty” if he decides to challenge him. The governor of Florida responded Tuesday with a reminder of his success in the November 8 elections, where he was re-elected “with the greatest advantage achieved for this position in all of history (60% to 40%),” he boasted. he. It was a simple way to put the finger in the eye of the (bad) loser of the last presidential elections in the country, a promoter as well as other big losers in those elections last November.

Electoral animation will not be lacking between now and November 2024.