Trump campaign rips Nikki Haley for prior Hillary Clinton praise

WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign was quick to blast new rival Nikki Haley on Wednesday, noting that she had praised Hillary Clinton in a 2012 interview and had initially vowed not to run for the White House if the former president was also a candidate.

Moments after Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, launched her presidential bid in Charleston, the Trump campaign sent out an email blast headlined: “The Real Nikki Haley.”

The message listed seven critiques of prior Haley comments, including her statement in April 2021 that she would support the 45th president, 76, if he chose to run again in 2024.

“I would not run if President Trump ran, and I would talk to him about it,” she said at the time. “That’s something that we will have a conversation about at some point, if that decision is something that has to be made.”

But Haley, 51, changed her mind, entering the race with a dig at “faded names of the past” — in an apparent reference to both the 80-year-old President Biden and the 76-year-old Trump, whose campaign did not say whether she reached out to the former president before making her decision.

“We won’t win the fight for the 21st century if we keep trusting politicians from the 20th century,” Haley said during her announcement.

The former governor of South Carolina served as Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 through December 2018, during which Haley said she “had a great working relationship with him.”

“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.”

The Trump campaign also highlighted Haley’s 2012 sitdown with the New York Times, during which she said “the real reason I actually ran for office is because of Hillary Clinton.”

“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,” she said at the time. “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 said Haley “does not support a border wall” and had “[threatened] Medicare and Social Security.”

“What they need to be doing is looking at entitlements,” Haley said in a 2010 interview on Fox News. “Look at Social Security. Look at Medicaid. Look at Medicare. Look at these things, and let’s actually go to the heart of what is causing government to grow, and tackle that.”

The former president’s campaign also criticized Haley for urging the US to send Ukraine fighter jets “instead of finding a peaceful solution to the Ukraine-Russia war” and noted she told NBC’s “Meet The Press” in March 2022 the conflict “never would have happened” in the previous administration.

“As much as everybody wants to talk about what he says, what I look at is what he did. He sanctioned Russia,” Haley said at the time. “He expelled diplomats. He shut off Nord Stream 2. He built up our military, and he made us energy independent. All of those things countered Putin and countered Russia.”

A Yahoo News/YouGov survey from last week showed that Trump has better odds at winning the GOP nomination with Haley in the race. While 45% of Republicans or GOP-leaning independents favored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over Trump in a head-to-head matchup, adding Haley to the mix split the field, giving Trump 38% support, followed by DeSantis at 35% and Haley with 11%.