Nikki Haley Tears Into Trump In Closing Message Ahead Of South Carolina Primary

BEAUFORT, S.C. ― Nikki Haley is aware of she gained’t win South Carolina.

But within the closing days of the GOP presidential main right here in Haley’s house state, the previous South Carolina governor is making her most aggressive, if futile, case but for why Donald Trump, her former boss, doesn’t deserve one other probability on the White House.

In latest days, Haley has instructed that Trump would rule as a king; slammed him for siding with dictators and abandoning allies; questioned his psychological acuity; and warned that he would increase taxes whereas including to the nationwide debt and worsening the migrant disaster on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Haley went from hardly mentioning Trump by identify in Iowa ― the social gathering’s first nominating contest, the place she got here in a distant third ― to focusing a lot of her stump speech on pitching herself as extra competent and centered than both Trump or President Joe Biden.

At a rally in a moss-covered park within the coastal metropolis of Beaufort on Wednesday, Haley tore into Trump over what she referred to as his sample of insulting present and former service members, together with, most lately, her husband Michael, an officer with the South Carolina National Guard who’s deployed in Africa.

“You mock one member of the military, you’re mocking every member of the military … [Trump’s] never worn a uniform. The closest he’s ever come to harm’s way is a golf ball hitting him on a golf cart,” Haley mentioned to laughter from the gang of a number of hundred.

“Bone spurs!” shouted a person within the viewers, referring to the medical prognosis that exempted Trump from serving within the Vietnam War.

“To hell with him!” one other particular person yelled.

Many of the supporters drawn to Haley’s occasion — except for a gaggle of obvious MAGA supporters who criticized her for taking cash from Democrats — have been firmly anti-Trump.

Jean Muehlfeld, a retired trainer, mentioned she’s voted for Democrats previously, however was inquisitive about Haley and open to supporting her within the GOP main. Still, if the election comes right down to a Trump-Biden rematch, as seems probably, Muehlfeld mentioned her alternative is evident.

“Biden has a lot of good people behind him,” she mentioned. “I don’t know if Trump has the same person behind him every day or not. I mean, he’s so hateful.”

Haley, the primary particular person to function Trump’s United Nations ambassador, spent a number of minutes lacerating Trump for refusing to sentence Russian President Vladimir Putin after the sudden demise final week of a outstanding Putin critic, Alexei Navalny.

“He has sided with a guy who’s made no bones about wanting to destroy America, and Trump wants to stand with Putin instead of the allies that stood with us on 9/11? In that one moment, when he went off the teleprompter, he made our allies more vulnerable, but he made the situation for our military men and women in those areas less safe,” she mentioned, referring to Trump’s remarks throughout a rally this month when he appeared to encourage Putin to invade NATO allies that don’t pay their dues.

Haley has vowed to proceed within the presidential main in opposition to Trump, even when South Carolina offers her what’s projected to be one other humiliating defeat in opposition to the previous president. Heading into the fourth main nominating contest, Trump is thrashing Haley 63% to 35%, in accordance with a Suffolk University/USA Today survey of probably voters launched this week.

Still, Haley is waiting for primaries on March 5, Super Tuesday, meaning to take the combat to Trump in Michigan, Massachusetts, California and 12 different states. But Trump’s marketing campaign argues it’s all for naught. In a memo launched earlier this week, Trump’s senior advisers projected the previous president would button up the GOP nomination as early as March 12, when extra states forged their ballots.

“This is the diagnosis she refuses to accept: The end is near,” Trump marketing campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles wrote Tuesday.

The delegate math for Haley could look daunting, however her marketing campaign has loads of gasoline left within the tank. January was her marketing campaign’s strongest fundraising month, with $16.5 million in contributions. She has additionally had success in elevating giant sums of cash off Trump’s assaults. She raised $1 million after Trump went after her husband, in accordance with her marketing campaign. And after Trump threatened to shun her donors from the MAGA motion, she offered 20,000 T-shirts with the phrases “Barred. Permanently.”

“If you’re running for president, you’re supposed to be bringing people in. It’s a story of addition. You don’t push people out of your club,” Haley mentioned of Trump’s assaults on her supporters on Wednesday.

Haley probably gained’t be the GOP presidential nominee, however the longer she sticks round and criticizes Trump’s each transfer, the extra injury she might inflict on his probabilities of uniting the Republican Party within the basic election in opposition to Biden.

Already, some Haley supporters say they’d by no means vote for Trump and would slightly abstain from the November election totally.

“I don’t believe anything that comes out of that man’s mouth,” mentioned Sheree Richnow, 68, a retiree from Beaufort. “We just don’t have a good choice if those are our choices,” she mentioned of a second Biden-Trump matchup.

“I cannot vote for Trump,” mentioned Greg Schulte, a retired veteran of the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. “Trump is a RINO, a Republican in name only. He’s not a Ronald Reagan Republican.”

And Marty Hupka, an 86-year-old retired contractor from Saint Helena, mentioned there was “no doubt in my mind” he would vote for Biden over Trump if it got here to it.

“It’s like, the lesser of two evils,” defined Hupka, who was holding a Haley signal.