Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has acknowledged that she regretted her failure to point to slavery as a cause of the Civil War during a town hall event in December. Asked about what she believed led to the Civil War, Haley had responded, saying, “The cause of the Civil War was basically how the government was going to run.”

During an appearance on the “Breakfast Club” radio show on Wednesday, the GOP presidential candidate was asked by host Charlamagne tha God if her failure to answer the question correctly made her feel “stupid” and she answered in the affirmative.

“Why initially didn’t you just say, ‘Hey, it was about slavery?” Charlamagne asked her.

In her response, she said that she thought the man who asked her the question had been trying to ask something else. She also said that she could see that he was not one of her supporters. However, she admitted that her response was off.

“Slavery should have been the first thing that came out of my mouth. I mean, growing up in South Carolina, we all knew that the Civil War was about slavery. That almost seemed too easy; I thought he was asking a harder question, and that’s why I didn’t say it,” she stated.

Blaming her response on overthinking the question, she added, “It was wrong. I should have said it.”

When Charlamagne asked, “Did you feel stupid that night?” she answered, “Yeah, I mean, it was one of those things like, because it was so – like slavery’s a given – so I was mad that it was a given, but I was too busy judging his intentions than I was just answering the question.”

Haley sparked backlash with her Dec. 27 response to the question of what caused the war, having talked about the role of government and saying it had to do with “the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do.”

Even when pressed further by the questioner, she offered a word salad about the role of the government, capitalism and individual freedom. Her failure to point to slavery in her answer was disappointing to the questioner, who said, “In the year 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’”

“What do you want me to say about slavery?” Haley had clapped back at the man and moved on to take another question.

However, after generating controversy, she backtracked her words the next morning, saying in a radio interview on Thursday morning that “Of course the Civil War was about slavery.”

She then emphasized on her previous comments, saying that “freedom matters. And individual rights and liberties matter for all people.”

However, the former U.N. Ambassador made things worse for herself during a CNN town hall in January, when she explained, “If you grow up in South Carolina, literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery. You grow up and you have—you know, I had Black friends growing up. It is a very talked-about thing.”