Potential 2024 presidential hopeful calls herself “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants”.
Calling herself “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants,” Indian American Republican leader Nikki Haley, a potential 2024 presidential hopeful has asserted that “America is not a racist country. It’s just the opposite.”
Haley, who has declared she would forgo a 2024 presidential bid and support former President Donald Trump should he run, offered a preview of how she may distinguish herself in a 2024 presidential contest, Politico reported.
During a 30-minute speech before the 500-person Iowa Republican Party’s Lincoln dinner last Thursday, Haley embraced the cultural issues currently animating the party’s conservative base.
Read: Nikki Haley will support Trump if he runs in 2024 (April 13, 2021)
Calling herself “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants” the former UN ambassador under Trump said that growing up she was “a brown girl in a black-and-white world.”
“Take it from me, the first female and minority governor of South Carolina,” Haley was quoted as saying.
“I said it last year at the Republican national convention, and I will keep on saying it: America is not a racist country. It’s just the opposite. America has done more to ensure equal justice and opportunity than any other country in history.”
She also railed against teaching in schools that systemic racism has been ingrained in society, accused Democrats of “strong-arm[ing] big tech, big business, and big government into silencing anyone who doesn’t toe the liberal line” as also supporting “riots and lawlessness.”
Read: Indian American politician Nikki Haley isolated after criticizing Trump (February 25, 2021)
Haley, who did not speak explicitly about running for president in 2024, has changed her approach to the former president since the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Politico noted.
Just months after flaying Trump for his role in the riot and predicting that his political career was finished, Haley hailed Trump’s approach to foreign policy, saying she “saw firsthand as ambassador to the United Nations that Donald Trump put America first.”
“Thank goodness for Donald Trump, or we never would have gotten Kamala Harris to the border,” Haley said, poking at the vice president’s announcement that she would be traveling to the US-Mexico border soon, ahead of Trump’s planned June 30 visit.
Her remarks represent a break for Haley, “who has vacillated in her approach toward Trump as she tests the presidential waters following his defeat,” Politico said.
Read: Is Nikki Haley getting ready for a 2024 White House run? (January 14, 2021)
“The early struggle to calibrate her position on Trump has penned Haley in between those in the Republican Party who are eager to move on from Trump and those who want to stick by him,” it said.
A day after the Capitol siege, Haley in a speech before Republican National Committee officials declared the then-president’s actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election “will be judged harshly by history.”
Haley went further in an interview published by Politico Magazine a few weeks later, saying that Trump had “lost any sort of political viability” and that she didn’t think he was “going to be in the picture” any longer, before adding: “He’s fallen so far.”
Read: Nikki Haley claims ‘America is not racist,’ later says she ‘faced discrimination’ (August 25, 2020)
“The remarks infuriated those in Trump’s orbit, who regarded them as an act of disloyalty and part of an effort to seek distance from the former president,” according to the Politico. In February, Trump turned down a request from Haley to meet at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Since then, Haley has been warmer toward Trump. In April, she said she would forgo a 2024 presidential bid and support Trump should he run, Politico noted.
Haley’s three-day swing across Iowa is former South Carolina governor’s first to the state this year and comes as several other would-be Republican presidential candidates make appearances in the state.