CNN's Brianna Keilar rips Nikki Haley for accusing media of sowing GOP divisions

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Haley: GOP must continue to be the party of 'solution'

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley joins 'The Ingraham Angle' to discuss the future of the Republican party post-Trump.

CNN anchor Brianna Keilar took former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to task Thursday after the former Trump appointee accused the mainstream media of wanting to divide the Republican Party. 

Haley penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal Wednesday slamming the media after a recent interview she gave Politico received attention for remarks dismissing former President Donald Trump as a future GOP leader following the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

"[The liberal media] wants to stoke a nonstop Republican civil war," Haley wrote. "The media playbook starts with the demand that everyone pick sides about Donald Trump — either love or hate everything about him. The moment anyone on the right offers the slightest criticism of the 45th president, the media goes berserk: Republicans are trying to have it both ways! It’s a calculated strategy to pit conservatives against one another. It’s also a ridiculous false choice. Real life is never that simple. Someone can do both good and bad things."

Keilar fired back Thursday by playing a montage of prominent GOP lawmakers defending and criticizing Trump in recent weeks. 

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"Haley says the media wants to stoke a Republican civil war. Stoke it how? By telling Americans that it's happening, what Republicans on either side of this divide are saying? Perhaps there would be no civil war if the media would just stop documenting?" Keilar said.

"There is a civil war," she later added. "The GOP is eating its own, casting out good people as it kowtows to conspiracy theorists. And the media ignoring that it's happening won't make Mitt Romney and Josh Hawley somehow agree on the existential questions facing their party." 

The CNN anchor then accused the former South Carolina governor of "trying to have it both ways" by praising Trump's policies while condemning his actions following his defeat in the November election. 

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"Your party is at a crisis point, Ambassador. You want to keep kicking the can down both sides of the road, ignoring reality until what? You look up and see the walking crowd you're with dense with White supremacists, dense with cravenly ambitious politicians who jettisoned their morals miles back, several clicks after they left Fiscal Conservative Town and Family Valuesville without so much as a look back," Keilar later continued. 

"It's a long road through the wilderness, especially with your eyes closed."