Nikki Haley is right: Biden’s collapse means Trump should up his game even more

Nikki Haley warned Republicans to prepare for a "younger" and more "vibrant" candidate to replace President Biden in the 2024 election. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

We totally get why Donald Trump hasn’t brought Nikki Haley into his inner council after he trounced her during the primaries, but we hope he heeds her warning in the wake of Joe Biden’s implosion Thursday night.

Trump did a fine job in the debate, keeping his cool and steadily scoring points — reassuring voters about his own ability to lead the nation even as Biden’s performance showed the world that he no longer can.

With that, he shored himself up among the independents who’d been Haley’s base throughout the primaries, work he’ll need to keep doing no matter who winds up as the Democratic nominee.

But if Biden does drop out, his replacement is guaranteed to be someone much “younger” and “more vibrant,” Haley notes. (They certainly can’t find anyone older or less vibrant.)

We’d add, also faster on his or her feet.

Yes, even Kamala Harris, who’s a spry 59 and will certainly benefit from heavy coaching.

Heck, Gavin Newsom’s 56 and has been auditioning to be the backup to Biden for the last year.

Dems and their media enablers will pull out all the stops the rest of the way, both in assailing Trump (the odds that Judge Juan Merchan sentences him to prison time grew ginormously around 9:05 Thursday night) and in propping up Biden or his replacement.

If the next debate comes in September as planned, don’t expect the ABC moderators to be as generally fair as CNN’s were: The left is already screaming for them to do in-debate “fact checking,” just for starters.

The more Trump can keep upping his game, the better he’ll do in November — and the more support he’ll have in the next Congress.

Meanwhile, as Haley also notes, the nation’s in for rough sledding before Trump can take office: “Our enemies just saw that they have between now and Jan. 20 to do whatever it is they want to do.”

It looked like Trump was on his way to an Electoral College landslide even before the debate, but the stakes got even higher that night: Let’s hope he can keep it up to unite as much of the nation as possible behind him, because the job facing the next president is now even larger.