Former presidential candidate Nikki Haley revealed in an interview with CNN that she won't be apologizing for her comments against former President Donald Trump, despite her complete 180 on his candidacy.
“I said a lot of tough things about him in the campaign. He said a lot of tough things about me in the campaign. That’s what happens in campaigns. I don’t think we need to apologize or take anything back. I don’t plan on doing that,” Haley said, admitting that she would still vote for the candidate she called “chaos.”
Trump, for his part, made equally brutal comments against his former U.N. Ambassador during the campaign, mocking Haley’s husband for his military service and coining the nickname “bird brain Nikki Haley” for her.
But though she felt in February “no need to kiss the ring,” she still decided to pledge her public support in May. Haley even slapped a cease and desist letter on a PAC comprised of her former supporters, “Haley Voters for Harris.”
In her interview with CNN, Haley also addressed President Biden’s decision to pass the torch to Kamala Harris after one historic term, noting that she wasn’t surprised.
“Through the whole campaign, I fought for mental competency tests. I wasn’t doing it to be disrespectful. I wasn’t doing it to be mean. I was doing it because I think it’s not just Joe Biden,” Haley said, having previously suggested Trump wasn’t fit to hold a second term.
Haley, who said in January that “the first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election,” sang Trump’s praises in a speech to the Republican National Convention last week, despite initially being snubbed. She blasted Harris as a far-left pick, but criticized some Republicans’ racist smear that she's a “DEI hire.”
"The fact that you put in one of the most liberal politicians you probably could have put in, it’s going to be an issue,” Haley said. “There’s so many issues we can talk about when it comes to Kamala Harris that it doesn’t matter what she looks like.
