It is getting personal between Donald Trump and Nikki Haley. Two weeks before South Carolina's Republican primary, the former President is taking personal shots at Haley rather than focusing on policy differences. He mocked her husband for not being with her out on the campaign trail. He is currently deployed overseas with the South Carolina National Guard. But here's what he said.

Where's her husband? Oh, he's away. He's away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he?

He's gone.

He knew. He knew.

Again, he is deployed overseas right now. And moments ago, the former South Carolina governor hit back at Donald Trump, demanding that the former President confront her directly.

Donald Trump had a rally today. And in that rally, he mocked my husband's military service. I'll say this, Donald, if you have something to say, don't say it behind my back. Get on a debate stage and say it to my face. If you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don't deserve a driver's license, let alone being President of the United States.

Ron Nikki Haley slam Trump for his remarks earlier today, saying in a post on X, Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about. Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being Commander and Chief. Ron, Trump has repeatedly mocked people serving their country in uniform. What do you make of this?

Yeah. I mean, this is part of the strangeness, I think, of the entire Republican primary. I mean, that language from Nikki Haley is in line with much tougher criticism that she's offering of him on a variety of fronts that simply was not there in all of 2023, when she had the forum of Republican debates in Iowa and New Hampshire in the early stages of the race, when the media attention was most intense and the concrete had not hardened in this race, she was not criticizing Trump in anywhere near the terms that she is across the board. And it's really not just her. We know from General John Kelly, who served as Trump's own White House Chief of Staff and his Head of Department of Homeland Security, that Trump, he has confirmed in statements, the reporting originally, Kelly in The Atlantic, that Trump referred to military service members as losers and suckers. Well, is John Kelly going to go on camera somewhere and discuss that rather than just issue a statement? I mean, Trump has had this Ron DeSantis has described it as a Pertourian guard of defenders in conservative media. But certainly the Republicans inside the GOP coalition who have reservations about his conduct and behavior and inclinations haven't exactly been telling their voters, sharing those concerns with their voters in an unvarnished way.

Ron, is Trump going to pay a price for this?

I think it depends. I mean, a lot of it is baked in, Jim, obviously. I think he already is paying a price. You have a President in Joe Biden who's approval rating is stuck at 40%, but the two of them are essentially in a dead heat. That's what I call the Trump tax that Biden runs further ahead of his approval rating than presidents typically we are able to do. We saw that in 2022, there already is a price. But the real question is whether those senior officials in a Trump administration like General Kelly, like Mark Esper, who I think you're going to be talking to shortly, Bill Barr, James Mattis, John Bolton, are they going to go out in a more visible way and share their concerns with the public? They believe Trump is unfit to be President. The question of whether they are going to be willing to say that in a highly public way, I think will answer your question of how much cost there ultimately is for him on these types of things.

Ron, earlier today, Trump was taking credit, bragging, once again, for tanking the bipartisan border deal. Let's listen to that.

Yeah.

This week, we also had another massive victory that every conservative should celebrate. We crushed Crooked Joe Biden's disastrous Open Borders bill. Mike Johnson did a very good job, and the whole group did a great job in Congress. We crushed it. We saved America from yet another horrific Biden betrayal.

Ron, in the previous hour, I tried to press Congressman Tim Birchie on this. He would not accept What I was saying that essentially Trump pressured the Republicans into killing this. He didn't want to go there. But isn't that the case?

Sure. I mean, it was a clear indication that this is a Trump Party. I think it is important to look not only at Trump's actions here, but what the alternative is that he is putting forward. Because of the way the Republican primary has played out in the manner I was just talking about, there really has been extraordinary little debate about Trump's agenda for a second term, but he has put forward a much more militant and very specific agenda compared to what he ran on in '16 or '20. One of the areas that is the most militant and specific Pacific, are his plans on immigration. He said on Friday night, Jim, Friday afternoon at the NRA, that within moments, quote, unquote, within moments of taking office, he would begin a mass deportation program. Stephen Miller has put out extraordinary detail about how they intend to do this with large scale raids in major cities, moving people to internment camp in Texas, and then removing them from the country in constant flight. I talked to a former ICE chief of staff this week who said that would take to 150,000 law enforcement personnel, plus another 50,000 people to run these camps.

And one of the ways they are talking about doing this, openly and explicitly, is requisitioning National Guard troops from red states and sending them into blue states whose governors won't cooperate. You're talking about the National Guard from Texas or Arkansas going into the West Side of Chicago, potentially, to deport people. And think about how that might play out in practice. Could you imagine scenes of federal law enforcement and national guards from out of state in conflict with local police that are defending a church where migrants have rushed for safety? The question of what a second Trump term would mean across the board really has not been engaged by anyone, including Biden, but certainly not by the other Republicans. It is an open question how much a part of the debate that's going to be between now and November.

Well, and Ron, the Senate also had an unusual weekend session this weekend to try to pass aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. One of the issues is, is Trump going to take that deal as well? Earlier this afternoon at this rally in South Carolina, he was essentially saying to Russia, go ahead and invade NATO countries if that's what you want to do. If these NATO countries aren't putting enough money into NATO, this is the way he describes it, then he's not going to defend them. He says, as President, if they are attacked by Russia. I mean, you juxtaposed that with... I mean, I was speaking with Patty Davis, the daughter of former President Ronald Reagan, the late President in the previous hour. That is not Ronald Reagan's Republican Party.

No. Yeah, and I I think Trump has to tank this deal in the same way of direct intervention because so many of the Republican senators have moved in that direction. Now, they may be 10 willing to move this forward. It's the remnants of the Reagan Party saw the US standing up against Russian aggression as a central part of the GOP identity. But this, again, is part of what I was just saying. We are not really at a point where there has been much discussion or debate about what a Trump's second term would mean. He says he would settle the Ukraine war within 24 hours. I think most people understand that to mean that he would force Zelensky and Ukraine to accept Russian control over a significant part of the country by threatening to cut off their aid. I think that's what many of the critics ultimately in the Republican Party, envision. It's just one of many. We could talk about tariffs. We could talk about using the Insurrection Act to send federal forces into blue cities to fight crime or round up the homeless. There's a broad array of issues on which he has laid out a very specific agenda that simply hasn't been addressed much yet in the context of this presidential race.

Right. Well, there have been other things that have been talked about in the news over the last several days. I'm glad that, Ron, you're highlighting the issues because that's where voters are going to be looking to try to parse out where they're going to stand when it comes down to these two choices coming up in November. Ron Brownstein, as always, thank you very much. Really appreciate.