By Judi James & Sean McPolin
Republican primary winner for the District of Columbia Nikki Haley showed signs of trying to "act confident" during her speech as the fear of losing a safe seat like DC managed to appear through the cracks, a body language expert has said.
Haley clinched the position at the weekend to mark her inaugural triumph in the 2024 campaign season. It disrupted former President Donald Trump's prevalence in the GOP voting contests, though is expected to pick up several hundred more delegates this week. However, the DC candidate's performance didn't impress everyone.
Body language expert Judi James said the vote "should have been a slam-dunk." Losing a shoe-in position in DC would cause more reputational damage and shame than losing in Trump’s heartland.
READ MORE: Donald Trump campaign slams Nikki Haley as 'Queen of the Swamp' after DC primary win
"As a result we can see Nikki’s acted signals of confidence and bravado increase here while her authentic, underlying techniques slither like quicksand," Judi explained. "Her intro onto the stage is ghastly. While Trump has his audiences whipped into a frenzy of expectation before he sets foot on the stage, Haley allowed an embarrassed and unenthusiastic-looking intro that only gained applause for the words: ‘She’s married’, which got them clapping for her husband and the totally tepid reference to her motherhood for ‘Two fantastic adult children who appear to be doing quite well’ Would Trump ever allow himself to be introduced with ‘He’s married’ and ‘He has grown up children’ listed as his key achievements?"
Judi went on to say how an offered handshake from Haley, which was given to her "warm up man" was nearly awkwardly refused and would have left her red faced. She said the Republican primary's body language made look distracted, adding: "Her ‘Hi!’ came with a hair preen and during one of her key campaign points about the danger of a Trump presidency to the economy, as she was all doleful eyes and seriousness, she suddenly broke off when she spotted someone in the audience, waving and laughing as she said ‘Hi Eli’, which completely diminished the deadly accuracy of her point."
She went on to say Haley's "ceaseless, distracting pacing" and her "fluttering hand gestures and weak, finger tip grip" of the microphone all added to an overwhelming lack of resolve, resilience or determination. Judi even compared the speech to something a stand-up comic would do, but quipped that even her "funny lines" fell flat and several tumbleweed moments.
Haley faced setbacks earlier in her campaign but declared her commitment to stay in the race through the contests, refraining from pinpointing specific primaries where she anticipated victory. She had a loss in South Carolina, her home state, but has remained persistent since then.
Join the Mirror's SMS news service to get the biggest breaking stories delivered straight to your phone. Click here to subscribe.
Speaking about the overall impression the speech gave, Judi commented: "Haley is so strong on experience, knowledge and the intellectual detail that she doesn’t need to showboat about Trump and Biden’s age and mental abilities, she just needs to stand there and let rip and play to her strengths.
"Her rhetorical question: ‘So how do we fix the economy?’ introduced enough strong eye contact and precision gestures to prove she knows what she’s talking about. But some inner nerves seemed to get the better of her here as she turned her key soundbites into questions with a rising vocal intonation and with her signature gesture of one hand held palm-upward as though she’s begging for agreement when she should be assuming or creating it."
Most recently, Donald Trump's campaign hit the headlines after it called Ms Haley "Queen of the Swamp" after her DC primary win. Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X: "Tonight's results in Washington D.C. reaffirm the object of President Trump's campaign - he will drain the swamp and put America first. While Nikki has been soundly rejected throughout the rest of America, she was just crowned Queen of the Swamp by the lobbyists and DC insiders that want to proetect their failed status quo. The swamp has claimed their queen."
