2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley made a guest appearance on Saturday Night Live to poke fun at former President Donald Trump for his refusal to debate her on the campaign trail.
Haley appeared in the skit as a “concerned South Carolina voter” attending a CNN Town Hall, during which she asked Trump, who was being played by James Austin Johnson, why “won’t you debate Nikki Haley?”
In response, the skit’s Trump identified the former U.N. ambassador as “the woman who was in charge of security on Jan. 6,” a nod to when the former president appeared to mix up Haley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
The skit also poked fun at various stories surrounding Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, including a report Trump has spent $50 million of his donor funds to fight his legal battles.
“Had a blast tonight on SNL!” Haley wrote on social media. “Know it was past Donald’s bedtime so looking forward to the stream of unhinged tweets in the a.m.”
During the skit, Trump’s impersonator joked that he referred to Haley as “Nikki Haley Joel Osment” and proceeded to say, “I see dead people,” an iconic quote from the 1999 film The Sixth Sense. Haley then joked that the quote would be what voters say if Trump and President Joe Biden were their only choices in the November election.
At the end of the skit, Haley was asked by one of the town hall attendees what was the cause of the Civil War, referencing an answer she gave in January when she did not mention slavery. Haley acknowledged in the skit that she should have said slavery “the first time.”
Trump did not directly react to the skit on Truth Social, his own social media platform, but instead posted a video of various times Haley has contradicted herself on the campaign trail, calling the video “Tricky Nikki.”
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Haley’s appearance on SNL comes as she is trailing behind Trump in the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential primary race, with her home state’s primary in South Carolina only three weeks away on Feb. 24. Recent polling data taken the final week of January suggests that Trump has more favorability than Haley, with the former president at 47% compared to Haley’s 34%.
The Democratic Party’s South Carolina primary was held on Saturday, and Biden won with 96% of the votes. The total tally of votes in the primary only reached 131,870 ballots, much lower than the 539,263 who voted in the Democratic primary in 2020.
