Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley took aim at former President Donald Trump during a Tuesday interview in which she called him “unhinged” and criticized him for his foreign policy approach. The candidate also highlighted widespread dissatisfaction with Trump and President Joe Biden due to their ages and attempted to cast herself as a younger alternative who can lead the country forward.
Haley made her comments during an interview with “TODAY” co-host Craig Melvin. She argued that the former president has become “more diminished” since she served under his administration.
The candidate asserted that she did not blindly go along with Trump if she believed he was wrong, claiming that she “called him out every single time” while serving as U.N. Ambassador. “If something was wrong — I had a conversation with him about Charlottesville, I had a conversation about something that he would say about women, I had a conversation with him about multiple things,” she stressed.
Echoing comments she made Monday on CNN, Haley also claimed that Trump does not respect the military and brought up past controversies involving comments he made on the issue.
But the reality is he's talked about the military for years now in disparaging ways. Suckers, losers, John McCain, Gold Star families. What's different now? What's different this time?
Before when he did it, it was during the 2016 election, everybody thought, Oh, did he have a slip? What did that mean? The problem now is he is not the same person he was in 2016. He is unhinged. He is more diminished than he was.
READ MORE: Nikki Haley Is Still Insisting She Will Defeat Donald Trump
Melvin pressed Haley on her previous support and pointed out that now she is saying he is no longer qualified to be president. Haley went even harder at Trump:
If you don't know the value of our men and women in uniform, if you don't know the sacrifice that they go through. Why should I, as a military spouse in all our military families, trust you to know you're going to keep them out of harm's way? I mean, the reality is he's never been anywhere near a military uniform. He's never had to sleep on the ground. He's never known how to sacrifice. The most harm he's ever possibly had is getting hit by a golf ball when he's sitting in a golf car. That's the truth.
Nikki Haley calls Trump "unhinged" and "diminished," claims he does not respect the military.
— Jeff Charles, An Awful Pundit🏴 (@jeffcharlesjr) February 14, 2024
"He's talked about the military for years now in disparaging ways. Suckers, losers, John McCain, Gold Star families." pic.twitter.com/JVOItV9kaO
Haley then turned her attention to Biden, referencing special counsel Robert Hur’s report noting his cognitive decline: “He’s not the Joe Biden he was two years ago.”
The candidate emphasized the age issue, saying that the nation doesn’t “want these two old men running.”
Haley appears to be trying to use her relative youth as a selling point to the Republican base. However, she has still struggled to close the polling gap between Trump and herself. This is because even though she is much younger than Trump, she still represents the old-guard GOP establishment, which is not popular with the conservative base.
The former ambassador’s interventionist stance on foreign policy is a major sticking point with Republican voters, many of whom are not on board with the idea that the United States should be involved in foreign military conflicts. Moreover, they are not willing to abide a lurch back into the pre-Trump era. Taking all of this into account, it is not surprising that Haley’s chances of winning the GOP nomination appear minuscule.
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