Indian American Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who has gained traction with her performance in three-party debates, says former President Donald Trump is just not the right person to be president right now.
Haley who did not answer during the fourth Republican debate, held Dec. 7 whether Trump is fit to be president, told ABC it was not about fitness but rather that Trump is just not the right person to be president right now.
“It’s not about fitness. I think he’s fit to be president. It’s ‘Should he be president?’ I don’t think he should be president. I thought he was the right president at the right time,” she said in an interview airing Dec. 11, on ABC News Live.
“We’ve got to look at the issues that we’re dealing with, coming forward with new solutions, not focusing on negativity and baggage of the past. So it’s not about being fit. It’s just I don’t think he’s the right person to be president,” she added during the interview in Sioux Center, Iowa.
Haley has insisted that Trump was the right president at the right time in remarks from the campaign trail, but recently, she has taken to calling for the country to move past him, ABC noted. However, at the first Republican debate, she signaled she would support Trump as nominee even if he were convicted of a felony.
Haley, who served as UN ambassador under Trump was asked about her waffling on her loyalty towards Trump, something that her former boss himself has called her out on, saying, “She criticizes me one minute, and 15 minutes later, she un-criticizes me.”
“You know, anti-Trumpers don’t think I hate him enough and pro-Trumpers don’t think I love him enough. I call it like I see it,” she said.
“I’m not going to be 100% with him. I’m not going to be 100% against him. It’s not personal for me. This is about what’s right for the country,” she continued.
“This is about how we’re going to lead. This is about the direction we should go. It’s not about the personal thoughts of an individual. It’s about the fact that we have a country to save.”
Haley sparred with fellow Indian American candidate Vivek Ramaswamy after he brought up Haley’s daughter previously having a TikTok account, which she has since deactivated.
“How do you get TikTok banned if you use it?” was the question posed to Ramaswamy, who himself has a TikTok account.
“I want to laugh at what Nikki Haley said. Her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time. So you might want to take care of your family first,” Ramaswamy started, getting booed by some audience members.
Nikki Haley quickly told Ramaswamy to “Leave my daughter out of your voice” before calling him “scum.”
Haley’s daughter Rena told ABC that she felt Ramaswamy mentioning her use of TikTok was unnecessary and uncalled for.
“I mean, I felt like it was unnecessary,” she said. “I feel like it’s, people know not to bring kids into a situation. And so I felt like it was kind of uncalled for.”
Meanwhile, according to a Politico analysis Nikki Haley polls better against President Joe Biden than Trump does because she “is winning swaths of moderate voters who’d pick Joe Biden if Donald Trump wins the GOP nomination.”
“They’re independents and moderates. They hate Donald Trump and have mixed views of Joe Biden’s job performance as president. And they just might help Republicans close a historic gender gap,” it said.
“Those are the voters who tell pollsters they’d vote for Nikki Haley over Biden. But if the 2024 election is a rematch of 2020, they would back Biden over Trump,” Politico said.
Polls clearly suggest Haley is a stronger general-election candidate than Trump, with Haley leading Biden by 4 points in the latest RealClearPolitics averages while Trump leads the president by 2 points and Florida Gov Ron DeSantis leads by 1 point, Politico noted.
Some polls even show Haley with gaudy, double-digit leads over Biden — including a recent Wall Street Journal poll that showed her a stunning 17 points ahead of Biden (Trump led the president by 4).
A Politico analysis of recent polls — and data provided exclusively by Marquette Law School pollster Charles Franklin — shows Trump and Haley would assemble different electoral coalitions in matchups against Biden.
And the differences aren’t just a curiosity: They’re undergirding Haley’s case as she seeks an unlikely, come-from-behind victory in the weeks leading up to the first caucuses and primaries, it said.
“I beat Joe Biden by 10 to 13 points” in some of the polls, Haley told Fox News Channel this week, before pressing the electability argument down the ballot: “This is about governorships up and down the ticket. This is about House seats, Senate seats. This is about winning again.”