Republican strategist Karl Rove dismissed comedian Bill Maher’s “dream” idea of a “unity ticket” featuring President Biden and former GOP primary presidential candidate and United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley.
“Bill Maher’s got an innovative mind, but the Democrats are never gonna get rid of Kamala Harris,” Rove said Monday on Fox News’s “The Story” to host Trace Gallagher, in a clip highlighted by Mediaite.
“And they’re never gonna put Nikki Haley, a conservative, on the ticket,” Rove continued. “So Bill, nice thinking, but this ain’t ever gonna happen, and Nikki Haley would be the first to say ‘I’m not gonna do it.'”
Rove’s comments came in response to a clip aired just moments before from the Friday episode of Maher’s HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” in which he says that Haley running with Biden is his “dream, a unity ticket.”
“And then he would, I think, definitely win,” Maher continued.
Haley dropped out of the GOP presidential primary race in the wake of the Super Tuesday primary elections, in which former President Trump won all but one of the contests.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him, and I hope he does that,” Haley said the morning after Super Tuesday. “At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing.”
Biden welcomed supporters of Haley into his campaign that same day, saying it “takes a lot of courage to run for president.”
“Nikki Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump: about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before Vladimir Putin,” Biden said in a statement.