Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley took digs at former President Donald Trump during a town hall event on Sunday. As the Feb. 24 South Carolina primary draws closer, she is hoping more than ever to drive the message home that she can make a better leader for the country than her former boss.
Citing polling that shows 70% of Americans do not want Trump or President Joe Biden to win the election, she made a case that America needs a president who can serve two terms “fully working, fully disciplined and ready to get the job done.”
She then went further to tout her progress in the GOP presidential race, in which she is one of the two major candidates left standing.
“I look at where we started, there were 14 candidates in the race. We’ve defeated a dozen of fellas. I just have one more fellow to catch up to. And through it all, there have been naysayers and that’s okay. I’m used to being an underdog,” she stated.
Pointing to how she finished at 20% in the Iowa caucuses and 43% in the New Hampshire primary, she said Trump was shocked at how many votes she had in New Hampshire.
“The night that we got 43% of the vote, President Trump literally became unhinged and went on a temper tantrum. And all he did was talk about revenge. And then the next day he said, anybody who who supported me was barred permanently from MAGA,” she said.
The former U.N. ambassador also took a swipe at the Republican Party, suggesting that the country’s $34 trillion debt is on Republicans as much as it is on Biden and Democrats.
“The first thing we have to understand is Republicans and Democrats put us into this mess, and we’ve got to call them both out for getting us into this mess. Whether it was the spending, whether it’s the borrowing, whether it’s all of the things that they’ve done, we are $34 trillion in debt. We’re having to borrow money just to make our interest payments,” she stated.
Warning of the implications of the nation being in so much debt, she added, “We’re paying more in interest payments than we are in our defense budget,” she continued. “You know who pays attention to that? Russia, China and Iran. So we’ve got to start pulling out of that. The way we do that is we start with our economy. We claw back $100 billion of unspent COVID dollars that are still sitting out there, instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after middle America. Go after the hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID fraud, one out of every $7 was spent fraudulently. If 8% of our budget is interest, quit borrowing. Cut up the credit cards.”
After the event, the GOP presidential candidate took to X to write, “12 fellas down. 1 to go.”
12 fellas down. 1 to go.
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 18, 2024