Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign blasted Nikki Haley, who just announced her candidacy for president, for praising Hillary Clinton in a 2012 interview, while also noting the former United Nations ambassador’s pledge not to run against Trump.
As Haley announced her 2024 bid, the Trump campaign distributed an email with the subject line reading, “The Real Nikki Haley.”
The email noted a number of critiques of Haley, beginning with her broken promise to not challenge Trump if he ran again.
“I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it,” the former South Carolina governor said in 2021.
“That’s something that we will have a conversation about at some point if that decision is something that has to be made.”
But in her announcement speech, Haley seemingly took a shot at “faded names of the past” such as Trump and Biden, saying, “We won’t win the fight for the 21st century if we keep trusting politicians from the 20th century.”
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Haley, who served as Trump’s first ambassador to the UN, reported having a great relationship with Trump.
“I appreciated the way he let me do my job. I thought we did some fantastically great foreign policy things together,” she said in April 2021. “And look, I just want to keep building on what we accomplished.”
But despite the affable relationship between the two – Trump said he even told Haley to “follow her heart” regarding the 2024 election – the Trump campaign was quick to attack her on numerous fronts.
The campaign also discussed Haley’s 2012 New York Times interview, in which she suggested that Hillary Clinton is the reason she ran for office in the first place.
“The real reason I actually ran for office is because of Hillary Clinton,” Haley said.
“Everybody was telling me why I shouldn’t run: I was too young, I had small children, I should start at the school board level.”
“I went to Birmingham University, and Hillary Clinton was the keynote speaker on a leadership institute, and she said that when it comes to women running for office, there will be everybody that tells you why you shouldn’t but that’s all the reasons why we need you to do it, and I walked out of there thinking ‘That’s it. I’m running for office.’”
Trump’s campaign also suggested Haley will refuse to back a border wall and threaten popular taxpayer-funded programs such as Medicare and Social Security, according to the New York Post.
