Alex Wagner Faults Nikki Haley for Avoiding ‘Big Elephants in the Room’ in Trump Criticisms: Hasn’t ‘Gone for the Jugular’ | Video

That said, the MSNBC host thinks “full-throated” criticisms would’ve “disqualified her even earlier”

As the only Republican left challenging Donald Trump for the primary presidential nomination, Nikki Haley has officially started criticizing him directly. But MSNBC host Alex Wagner doesn’t think she’s doing nearly enough to make it count.

Appearing on “Late Night With Seth Meyers” on Wednesday, Wagner — fresh off the ground in New Hampshire, where she reported on the state’s primary live — admitted that, while it’s good that Haley is now outright criticizing Trump to voters, the presidential hopeful doesn’t necessary deserve that much credit for it.

“Can I just say — just to put a fine point on like, criticizing Trump — yes, she makes a point about his cognitive decline, she makes a point about how he’s not a kingmaker in contested, tight elections. But there are a lot of big elephants in the room that she doesn’t talk about,” Wagner said.

“Like, I don’t know, shredding the Constitution saying he wants to be a dictator on Day 1 and undermining democracy. That stuff?” she continued. “I maintain she hasn’t really gone for the jugular, but you know, in this sort of modern GOP, the very fact that she’s willing to utter the fact that he’s a fallible candidate makes her, I guess, singular at this stage of the game.”

That said, Wagner conceded that if Haley had gone after Trump in her campaign sooner, she likely wouldn’t still be in the race at all (even though Wagner also believed that it’s not “possible to win in the Republican primary unless you are Donald Trump”).

“I really think that, for her to have gone — to be full-throated, consistently, as a critic of Donald Trump would’ve disqualified her even earlier,” she said. “And I think we saw that with Chris Christie and anyone else who even semi, sorta tried.”

You can watch Alex Wagner’s full appearance on “Late Night” in the video above.

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