Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and 2024 Republican presidential contender, sharply criticized the party’s top-polling candidates in a CNN town hall in Iowa on Sunday.
Former President Donald Trump, Haley’s former boss when she served as ambassador to the United Nations, was wrong, she said, to defend the actions of his supporters at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 – which she called a “terrible day.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, she said, is hypocritical to spend taxpayer dollars on a legal battle with Disney over what started as a policy agreement.
“All this vendetta stuff? We’ve been down that road,” Haley said, in a two-for-one swipe at both rivals.
She made a forceful case for the United States’ involvement in Ukraine’s war with Russia, a break from both Trump and DeSantis.
And she referred frequently to her time as South Carolina governor, touting her efforts to remove the Confederate flag from the state flag, voter identification laws passed on her watch and more.
Haley said she’ll support whoever wins the Republican presidential primary. But, she said, “I don’t play for second. I never have; I’m not going to start.”
Here are eight takeaways from Haley’s town hall:
Breaking with Trump and DeSantis, Haley makes the case for Ukraine
While Trump and DeSantis have made headlines with their wobbly positions on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Haley made a clear case for continued American involvement in the war, arguing that victory for Russia would set off an even more deadly global crisis.
“This is bigger than Ukraine,” Haley said during the CNN town hall, “this is a war about freedom and it’s one we have to win.
Haley’s comments represented a clear break from Trump, who appointed her ambassador to the United Nations, who has often touted his good relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin – a man she labeled a tyrant.
“For them to sit there and say this is just a territorial dispute, that’s just not the case,” Haley added in a barb aimed for DeSantis who initially labeled the war that way before backtracking.
Haley also called out Trump for congratulating North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last week after the hermit kingdom was elected to the World Health Organization’s executive board.
“Congratulate our friends, don’t congratulate our enemies,” Haley said, while also calling the WHO a “farce.”
Still, Haley’s sharpest words on foreign policy were directed at Biden, whom she blamed for setting the stage for Russian aggression by mishandling the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan.
“We’ve got chaos everywhere and none of that would’ve happened,” she said, if not for the clumsy – and deadly – departure from the country the US invaded in 2001.
Haley explains federal role on abortion
Haley said she believes there is a “federal role” in restricting abortion rights. But she wouldn’t directly answer questions about at what point in pregnancies she would seek to outlaw abortion.
Instead, Haley said she would seek a consensus that could clear the House and the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to end a filibuster.
She said she believes such a consensus measure would include banning late-term abortions, encouraging adoptions, making contraceptives more widely available and making clear that women who have abortions would not be jailed.
“Can’t we start there? Because what the politicos and what the media have done is they’ve made you demonize the situation when it’s so personal that we have to humanize the situation,” Haley said. “Our goal should always be, how do we save as many babies as we can, and support as many mothers as we do it.”
She said she is “unapologetically pro-life” because her husband was adopted and she “had trouble having both of my children.”
But, Haley added, “I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me for being pro-life.”
Haley comes out against ‘red flag’ gun laws
Haley for the first time on the trail came out against gun restrictions known as “red flag” laws, which allow officials to temporarily take away firearms from people determined by a judge to be a threat to themselves or others.
The laws, which have become popular in Democratic-run states, have angered many Republicans and gun rights advocates.
“I don’t trust the government to deal with red flag laws. I don’t trust that they won’t take them away from people who rightfully deserve to have them,” Haley said. “Because you’ve got someone else judging whether someone else should have a gun or not.”
As the number of mass shootings in the US approaches record numbers, and with Republicans blocking efforts to change laws at the federal level, Democrats have increasingly sought to restrict gun access at the local level.
Supporters of the measures argue that, in a sharp contrast with Haley’s point of view, they actually put more power in the hands of regular citizens – especially those who are most likely to be victims of gun violence.
Red flag laws or “extreme risk protection orders,” as Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently said, “have been proven to reduce suicides, save lives, and keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and violent criminals.”
Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/04/politics/nikki-haley-cnn-town-hall-takeaways/index.html