Nikki Haley launches 2024 presidential campaign
Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley formally launched her presidential bid Tuesday morning, becoming the first Republican to challenge former President Donald Trump in the 2024 primary..
“I’m Nikki Haley, and I’m running for president,” the former South Carolina governor said in her announcement video, which was posted on social media with the tagline, “Stand For America.”
Haley, 51, declared in the three-and-a-half-minute-long video that it was “time for a new generation of leadership … to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border and strengthen our country, our pride and our purpose.”
Haley also warned of threats facing the country from “socialist left” and Russia and China, who she said see America as “vulnerable.”
“They all think we can be bullied, kicked around,” Haley said. “You should know this about me, I don’t put up with bullies, and when you kick back it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels.”
Haley will lay out her campaign platform in a speech in Charleston, SC on Wednesday. If elected, she would become America’s first female president and the first president of Indian descent.
Haley kicked off the video by recalling her upbringing in a racially segregated South Carolina town.
“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants — not black, not white. I was different,” she said. “My mom would always say, ‘Your job is not to focus on the differences but the similarities.’ My parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America.”
She continued: “Some look at our past as evidence that America’s founding principles are bad. They say the promise of freedom is just made up. Some think our ideas are not just wrong, but racist and evil. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
After being elected South Carolina’s first female and minority governor in 2010, Haley received a coveted speaking slot at the 2012 Republican National Convention and gave the GOP response to then-President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union address in 2016.
A defining moment in Haley’s gubernatorial tenure came in June 2015, when a white supremacist who had been pictured holding Confederate flags killed nine black parishioners at a Charleston church. After years of resisting calls to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina’s State House, Haley endorsed and signed legislation taking the flag down less than a month after the shooting.
After serving as Trump’s UN envoy, Haley left the role at the end of 2018 and broke with the 45th president following the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
In January, the 76-year-old Trump told reporters Haley called him to discuss the possibility of a campaign against him — walking back an earlier statement that she wouldn’t challenge him if he ran for a third consecutive time.
“I talked to her for a little while, I said, ‘Look, you know, go by your heart if you want to run,’” Trump said. “She’s publicly said that ‘I would never run against my president, he was a great president.’”
Even after Haley condemned his actions leading up to the Capitol riot and his claims that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump seemed to welcome her competition in the 2024 race.
“She called me and said she’d like to consider it, and I said ‘You should do it,” he said.
During a rally last month to officially launch his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump was joined on stage by his South Carolina leadership team, which includes Republican Gov. Henry McMaster and Sen. Lindsey Graham, while Haley was notably absent from the event.
Other potential contenders for the Republican nomination include former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
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