Only dictators ban the free press – yet Nikki Haley gags DailyMail.com simply for reporting a story she doesn’t like. So DAVID MARCUS demands: Is she running to be president of America… or a tinpot communist state?

Nikki Haley holds herself up as the grownup in the room – however from this journalist’s perspective, she seems to be nothing greater than a petty, skinny-skinned, petulant youngster.

Perhaps, worse.

On Friday, Haley’s marketing campaign booted out DailyMail.com journalists from her New Hampshire rally – after which knowledgeable the web site, one of the largest English-language on-line information retailers in the world – that they will be banned from any and all future occasions.

It’s sufficient to make one surprise: Did one thing rub off on the former U.N. Ambassador as she sat subsequent to Russia, China and Iran?

This just isn’t the way it works in the land of the free and the residence of the courageous.

So, what occurred that was so ghastly, so horrid, so out-of-bounds that it merited a marketing campaign path loss of life sentence?

Nothing greater than journalists doing their jobs.

Earlier Friday, DailyMail.com reported on unique new sources alleging that Haley was mendacity in 2010 when she denied having two alleged extramarital affairs.

The preliminary claims had been primarily based on the sworn affidavits of Will Folks, 49, and Larry Marchant, 61.

The two South Carolina males alleged to have had separate sexual relationships with Haley whereas she was a South Carolina state lawmaker and earlier than she grew to become governor of the Palmetto State in 2011.

The new reporting – primarily based on the claims of a number of Republican Party sources ‘intimately conscious’ of the allegations – is that Haley’s alleged infidelities had been broadly identified inside South Carolina political circles.

So, this week, per good journalist follow, DailyMail.com contacted the Haley marketing campaign and provided them a chance to remark.

But as a substitute of issuing a livid denial, or, in actual fact, any remark in any respect, Haley responded with an intolerant, un-American tantrum.

The query is – why not reply to DailyMail.com and refute the new claims?

I am unable to reply that query.

Moreover, DailyMail.com is hardly hostile to Haley’s marketing campaign.

On Wednesday, the website printed an opinion piece by the beloved TV courtroom decide – Judge Judy.

‘It takes a lot for me to assist anybody candidate so strongly,’ wrote Judge Sheindlin. ‘But Nikki Haley’s integrity, intelligence, power, and expertise converse for themselves.’

Of course, one can see why the Governor would be personally discomfited by this reporting, however this unquestionably legit report cuts straight to the coronary heart of Haley’s raison d’etre.

If confirmed true, the allegations undermine one of her key speaking factors – that her husband’s service in the South Carolina Army National Guard is a driving pressure behind her run.

‘I’m doing this for my husband and his navy brothers and sisters. They want to know their sacrifice issues,’ Haley usually says.

And that is not all.

When requested at a debate if Donald Trump had the ‘character’ to be elected president once more, Haley mentioned that ‘ethical readability’ is a prerequisite for the place.

You see, Missus Haley – that is a job interview. Not a coronation or a launching pad for your ambitions.

If you would like maintain the similar workplace as George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, you will have to face a few robust, maybe, uncomfortable questions.

It just isn’t the function of journalists to lick the boots of politicians.

It’s our obligation to maintain your toes to the fireplace.

Haley has exhibited an authoritarian avenue. And this is not the first time she has veered in the route of despotic assaults.

Recall how Haley has referred to as for social media firms to ban nameless customers from posting on their platforms. In the age of the digital city sq. – that is a chilling prospect.

It is now honest to ask: what sort of administration would Nikki Haley run if she so recklessly tramples on a free press?

Donald Trump has referred to as the media, ‘the enemy of the individuals.’ Doddering Joe Biden dodges journalists’ questions at practically each alternative.

The Obama Administration shamelessly branded the Fox News Channel an illegitimate information group, focused its journalists with wiretaps and President Obama refused to seem on their exhibits.

Should we anticipate extra of the similar from President Haley?

No, journalists in America should not take Friday’s occasions frivolously – and in the previous, they have not.

‘Donald Trump simply barred Washington Post reporters from marketing campaign occasions. That ought to hassle you,’ wrote the Washington Post in 2016.

What say you now, WaPo?

This is a very harmful sport that Nikki Haley is enjoying.

If that is pettiness, it belies a childishness that ought not be in the Oval Office.

If it’s technique – it’s idiotic. It will not have the slightest impression on the method trustworthy journalists cowl her.

If that is vicious retaliation – nicely, that’s alarming.

The knock on Nikki is that she is a globalist puppet. If this doesn’t sign tone-deaf elitism, I do not know what does.

You can ban journalists out of your occasions, Madame Ambassador. But you’ll be able to by no means cease the American media from searching for the reality.

It is disgraceful that you’d even attempt.