Nikki Haley has called out Donald Trump and his team for its “bromance” and “masculinity stuff” following a slew of “edgy” remarks made about Kamala Harris at his Madison Square Garden rally.
The former United Nations ambassador appeared on Fox News’s Special Report on Tuesday, less than an hour after the vice president wrapped up her closing argument to voters at the Ellipse in Washington DC.
Haley, a one-time GOP presidential candidate who went on to endorse Trump at the Republican National Convention in July, slammed the Trump campaign for being “overly masculine” and alienating female voters at his rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday evening.
“They also need to look at how they’re talking about women,” she told Fox News’s chief political anchor Bret Baier.
“This bromance and this masculinity stuff, it borders on edgy to the point that it’s going to make women uncomfortable.”
Haley also criticized a vulgar attack advert from Elon Musk’s America PAC in which the narrator calls Harris a “big ole C-word.”
“You’ve got affiliated PACs that are doing commercials about calling Kamala the C-word,” she said.
“Or you had speakers at Madison Square Garden referring to her and her pimps,” she added, in reference to Trump donor Grant Cardone warning that the vice president and “her pimp handlers” will destroy the US if she is elected president.
“That is not the way to win women,” Haley said.
The former South Carolina governor also criticized the campaign’s decision to allow Tony Hinchcliffe to take the stage at the New York City rally, where the controversial comedian prompted outrage for calling Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.”
“This is not a time to have anyone criticize Puerto Rico, or Latinos. This is not a time to get overly masculine,” Haley said.
“They were right to denounce the comedian. They need to go and tell Puerto Ricans how much they do value them. They need to tell Latinos that.”
Haley has criticized the Trump campaign’s rhetoric around women before.
Last month, she urged Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, to stop questioning Harris’s intellect.
“You don’t need to call Kamala dumb. She didn’t get this far, you know, just by accident – she’s here,” she said on Fox & Friends. “You don’t need to go and talk about intelligence, or looks or anything else. Just focus on the policies.”
On Tuesday, Haley once again called for a shift of focus and told Baier that now is the time for Trump to stick to the script and talk about policy rather than attacking his rival’s personality.
Despite Haley’s concerns and the Trump campaign’s recent controversies, the former lawmaker said she remains “on standby” to be deployed by the Trump campaign less than a week out from Election Day.
“It is their campaign’s decision on what he needs in these last final days,” she said.
