Indian-American former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, after making statements of not supporting Trump and calling him “too old, too chaotic, too unhinged”, and too “prone to temper tantrums to be president again” earlier this month.
However, on Wednesday, during her appearance at the Hudson Institute, a top conservative think tank in Washington, she said, “I will be voting for Trump” in the upcoming November general elections.
This is her first public appearance since opting out of the presidential race in March. She delivered a speech on national security and foreign policy.
Haley said that while Trump had not been “perfect” on issues that mattered to her, like foreign policy and the national debt, Biden had been a “catastrophe”; earlier in February, she said that Trump couldn’t beat President Joe Biden.
“Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech. Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for him and continue to support me, not assuming they will just be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that”, she added.
“As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, who would secure the border, no more excuses; a president who would support capitalism and freedom; a president who understand we need less debt, not more debt,” the former US ambassador to the United Nations, who served in the ex-president’s Cabinet, further said.
Her comments came when she was asked whether Joe Biden or Trump would do a better job on national security issues.
Haley in the Presidential race
Haley shuttered her own bid for the GOP nomination two months ago but did not immediately endorse Trump, having accused him of causing chaos.
Trump, in turn, repeatedly mocked her with the nickname “Birdbrain,” though he curtailed those attacks after securing enough delegates in March to become the presumptive Republican nominee.
Despite saying that Trump could not beat Biden earlier, she has now made several criticisms of Biden’s foreign policy and handling of the U.S.-Mexico border in her speech Wednesday at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank she recently joined as she reemerges in the political realm.
Apart from Haley, Trump has been endorsed by Republican primary opponents, including Doug Burgum, the North Dakota governor, Vivek Ramaswamy, a bio entrepreneur, and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott.
