Nikki Haley said that she will vote for former President Donald Trump in the 2024 general election during her first public appearance since dropping out of the GOP primary.
Haley said Trump “has not been perfect” on policies important to her, including foreign policy, immigration and the economy, but President Joe Biden “has been a catastrophe.”
“So I will be voting for Trump,” said Haley, who served as US ambassador to the United Nations under the former president.
Haley’s remarks about the 2024 race came during a Q&A session following a speech at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, where she now serves as the Walter P. Stern chair.
Haley said she has “no regrets” about her GOP primary bid: “We left it all on the field.”
She also thanked the primary voters who have continued to back her even after her departure from the race — a potential warning sign for Trump. And she reiterated the call she’d made when exiting the race in March for the former president to reach out to those voters.
“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me, and not assume that they’re just going to be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that,” Haley said.
Earlier this year, Haley and Trump were engaged in what had become a bitter primary feud. Haley, at one point, questioned the former president’s mental fitness. She told CNN in January that Trump and Biden were “equally bad.”
Her critiques of Trump during the primary grew even sharper after the former president mocked the absence of her deployed husband and called for all of her donors to be “permanently barred from the MAGA camp.”
“In that moment, he showed that with that kind of disrespect for the military, he’s not qualified to be the president of the United States, because I don’t trust him to protect them,” Haley said in February.
Then, days before dropping out, she said she no longer believed she was bound by the Republican National Committee pledge to support the party’s eventual presidential nominee.
via: CNN
Nikki Haley a few months ago: Trump is unfit to be president.
Nikki Haley today: “I will be voting for Trump.”
What a disgrace! pic.twitter.com/DOUECb4Jt6
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) May 22, 2024