Going into Friday’s big GOP presidential forum in Iowa, the big buzz around Nikki Haley as a candidate was that she had experience not only at the gubernatorial level, but also at the foreign policy level — something only one other contender there, former Vice President Mike Pence, could boast of. Former President Donald Trump, who made Haley the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, was absent from the event — and he’s the only other one that has dealt directly with foreign powers.
So, when event moderator Tucker Carlson asked her who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, one might expect she would have a straight answer for him, being one of the few in the race touted as a foreign policy expert.
Saying “I don’t know” and then asking Carlson his own question might not, therefore, be the best augury for her campaign there is.
A bit of background for those who haven’t been following: While Carlson is among the most skeptical voices on the right regarding NATO involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, TheBlaze’s Glenn Beck noted in commentary before the one-on-one that Haley has been among “the most hawkish” of the candidates, with Steve Deace, also of TheBlaze (who helped put on the event) noting that “she’s actually out there saying admit Ukraine to NATO.”
Thus, the difference of opinions on the matter came up after Haley discussed the importance of American energy independence and the fact President Joe Biden’s administration is “going hat in hand to Saudi Arabia and getting dirty oil from Iran and Venezuela.”
“I saw at the United Nations there were two things our enemies never wanted us to have: They never wanted us to be energy-independent and they never wanted us to have a strong military.”
“Well, speaking of energy and the military,” Carlson transitioned, “Who blew up the Nord Stream pipeline?”
Now, as you may know, in September of 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines, which brought natural gas energy from Russia to Western Europe, were sabotaged by a series of undersea explosions.
Initially, suspicion was cast upon Russia, something media on both the right and left lapped up. Carlson, then still at Fox News, was one of the few voices who said it didn’t add up — and it turns out that was likely the case. In March, The New York Times cited U.S. officials who said new intelligence “suggests that a pro-Ukrainian group carried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward determining responsibility for an act of sabotage that has confounded investigators on both sides of the Atlantic for months.”
Haley at least pretended to be confounded, too: “Well, I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “Do you?”
“I’m not claiming you did,” Carlson said, laughing. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”
“That’s what I’m saying, do you know who did it?” Haley asked.
Tucker then answered his own question by noting it “seems pretty obvious it was backed by the Biden administration, I would say. I think all the evidence suggests that, but I wasn’t there. But, I mean, that seems like a huge step — this is the largest industrial sabotage in history, sent more carbon in the atmosphere than any act ever, and there’s like, weirdly no curiosity about who did it, and I think that’s strange.”
Haley then used that to (depending on your view of the matter) deflect or jiu-jitsu Carlson’s remark by noting that “there’s a lot of things that are strange with the Biden administration, this isn’t their first one.”
Carlson then responded that “I guess what I’m really saying is, if you were running against the Biden administration, to do something like that and shaft our closest allies in the world, which would be Western Europe, and deprive them of the energy they need to run their manufacturing sector and destroy their economy, which it is in the process of doing, that’s a major sin to have done something like that. You just betrayed our allies, and no one on the right is accusing the [Biden administration] of what they clearly did.”
Haley again used that to (again, depending on your view of the matter) deflect or jiu-jitsu by noting that the administration isn’t “being accountable on anything,” using the cocaine recently found at the White House as an example.
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“This is really important,” Haley said. “Because I have been into that area of the White House. This is not … as much as they want to say — and don’t forget the pot they just said was found there last year — so everything that they’re saying is that hundreds of people went through this area. No! I’ve been to that area. It is the most secure area anywhere — because this is where, [when] I was on the National Security Council with other members of [the National Security Council] met with the president, you discussed the most secure things.
“I know the area where the locker is — people don’t just go in and out of there,” she continued. “It is either the president, the vice president, cabinet members or deputy directors. Nobody else is going in there.”
Carlson didn’t press her on the fact that this is a non-answer answer, but by saying the Biden administration shouldn’t be trusted with its selective cluelessness on the blow at 1600 Pennsylvania, she’s also saying it shouldn’t be trusted in its selective cluelessness, period.
Thus, its performative head-scratching on the pipeline sabotage logically means that only four entities could have pulled this off: 1) Ukraine, without U.S. blessing and/or help, 2) Ukraine, with U.S. blessing and/or help, 3) the United States itself or 4) a James Bond villain who wanted to spike the price of natural gas for his own benefit. Four is improbable, but what Haley is implicitly saying is that there’s one entity on which it’s impossible to pin the explosion: Russia. Moreover, the Biden administration knows this and isn’t going to say it. Heck, they might have even helped do it in the first place
Now, there are two ways of looking at this. The first is that there’s a stroke of brilliance in Haley’s non-answer answer. It’s like Ronald Reagan’s “bear in the woods” commercial regarding Soviet strength and whether America should be ready to counter it:
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She didn’t have to spell out who she believes is responsible — and it happens to be the side the Biden administration is backing wholeheartedly, perhaps even with the Biden administration’s assistance. If you can’t trust them on the cocaine, you can’t trust them on their shrugging, either. On the other hand, she avoided the inevitable Politico/Washington Post gotcha headlines saying “Haley Backs Far-Right Conspiracy Theorists on Ukraine at Forum.” It’s a win/win.
On the other hand, what Tucker Carlson is saying is also very true: If you’re going to run against Joe Biden and you’re not going to call Joe Biden out on this directly — but use the cocaine incident (at least in this case) as an analogy to imply a relationship without stating it — that’s pusillanimity.
Haley knew what she was doing when she asked Carlson his own question — and Carlson knew what he was doing when he answered it. Whether or not Haley’s non-answer answer is what we should expect from someone who touts their foreign policy bona fides is another matter entirely. After all, when it comes to what Republicans should expect from a GOP nominee, a profile in kinda-sorta-maybe-courage simply doesn’t cut it.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
