Nikki Haley has dropped out of the 2024 Republican presidential race after a humiliating Super Tuesday where she lost fourteen states to Donald Trump and won just one.
In the emotional remarks she paid tribute to her mother, said the world is ‘on fire’ because of America’s ‘retreat’ and then confirmed she wouldn’t endorse Trump.
She then wished him ‘luck’ and said she wasn’t ready to back him by using the Margaret Thatcher quote: ‘Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind.’
Thatcher in 1997 called the line the ‘motto of her life,’ adding that ‘if necessary get the crowd to follow you.’
‘It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him,’ Haley said.
Nikki Haley has dropped out of the 2024 Republican presidential race after a humiliating Super Tuesday where she lost fourteen states to Donald Trump and won just one
Haley exited the stage without taking questions and with her two children alongside her
She referred to the large swath of her supporters who said on Super Tuesday that they will not vote for Trump in November, according to exit polls.
An ABC exit poll found that the majority of Haley voters in North Carolina (78%), Virginia (68%) and California (69%) would not commit to backing whoever the GOP nominee is.
‘And I hope he does that. At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away,’ Haley went on.
‘In all likelihood, Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July. I congratulate him and wish him well. I wish anyone well who would be America’s president. Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us.’
Trump notably did not extend an olive branch in a statement posted by a campaign aide minutes after Haley spoke. He said she got ‘TROUNCED last night’ and said ‘much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her supporters,’ he wrote.
‘At this point, I hope she stays in the “race” and fights it out until the end!’ Trump wrote Trump, who went on to turn his attention to November in a series of scathing attacks on Biden.
Biden’s campaign tried to seize an opening.
“Donald Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Nikki Haley’s supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign,’ he said in a campaign statement of his own.
That came hours after Trump failed to acknowledge her in his Tuesday night victory speech at Mar-a-Lago after calling her ‘bird brain’ in the last days of her campaign.
Haley opened the address by saying: ‘The time has now come to suspend my campaign. I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets.
‘And although I will no longer be a candidate, I will not stop using my voice for the things I believe in.
‘Our national debt will eventually crush our economy. A smaller federal government is not only necessary for our freedom, it is necessary for our survival. The road to socialism is the road to ruin for America’.
Haley exited the stage without taking questions and with her two children Rena and Nalin alongside her. Her husband Michael is currently deployed to Africa, which Trump has used to troll her in recent weeks.
He barely appeared with her during her campaign.
The former South Carolina governor announced she was ending her campaign in a speech in Charleston after spending the biggest day of the primaries hidden from the public eye
End of the road: Haley ended her campaign with no realistic path to defeating Trump, who is days away from getting the requisite delegates
Red white and blue: Haley ended her run after outlasting fellow Republican contenders, but winning only in Vermont and Washington, D.C.
Flagging campaign: Haley held her goodbye event inside the glass office building where campaign staff worked, after refusing to hold a campaing event Tuesday night
Donald Trump ridiculed Haley once again in a statement where he said she got ‘TROUNCED.’
Her departure after a vicious battle with the Republican frontrunner now means the general election will be a match-up the majority of Americans are dreading: 81-year-old Joe Biden versus 77-year-old Trump.
A defiant Haley directed fired up language at Trump by the end of her campaign, claiming he is in cognitive decline and isn’t the best candidate to beat Biden in November.
Trump started by calling her nicknames such as ‘birdbrain’ and ‘Nimrada’ – based on her Indian first name Nimarata – but then virtually ignored her when it became clear he was going to dominate the GOP race.
She survived as the last major GOP challenger Trump, getting the two-person race she wanted, only get swallowed by Trump’s overwhelming popularity among base MAGA voters and his Republican base
‘Are we really in this country going to have two 80 year olds running for president? It is a fact that when you are their age, you have mental decline,’ she told CBS news days ago – applying the label equally to her party’s leader.
On Tuesday, Haley told Fox & Friends, ‘I haven’t heard him pledge to me that he would support me if I won, so I don’t know why I have to go and pledge to him that I would support him.’
Haley suspended her presidential campaign after getting wiped out by Donald Trump in Super Tuesday states.
She beat out a gaggle of male contenders she sometimes called the ‘fellas,’ including former heavyweight Ron DeSantis, who beat her in Iowa.
But she failed to capture her home state of South Carolina, which could have given what developed into an insurgent campaign a lift.
Instead, she failed to win a contest other than Vermont on Tuesday and earlier in Washington, D.C., where slightly more than 2,000 voters gave her a win that Trump’s team ridiculed as making her ‘queen of the swamp.’
Haley began her campaign trying to walk the difficult line of distinguishing herself from Trump without outright blasting him as she sought space in a Republican electorate devoted to the frontrunner.
She was the first to raise issues about President Joe Biden’s mental capacity and cognitive abilities – but then turned that critique on Trump himself as the race narrowed.
By January, she was asking why the nation should be forced into an election between ‘two 80 year old’ (Biden is 81 and Trump is 77).
Trump mostly ignored her at first, beyond complaining that her run was disloyal.
But after she delivered a post-New Hampshire speech that Trump said sounded like a victory lap, he upped his criticism, ridiculing her as ‘bird brain.’
The former UN ambassador who served under Trump criticized Trump’s stance on the war on Ukraine, calling for continued U.S. support.
As she kept up her campaign through the start of the year, she sharpened her attacks, eventually winning plaudits from ‘never Trumpers’ who saw utility in her weakening Trump even if she had no path to victory.
Haley even began homing in on Trump’s legal troubles, first using code words like ‘chaos’ and then saying he couldn’t beat Biden while being constantly distracted by his legal troubles.
Haley survived as the last major GOP challenger Trump, getting the two-person race she wanted, only get swallowed by Trump’s overwhelming popularity among base MAGA voters and his Republican base
By Monday morning, down in every Super Tuesday state, Haley was resisting calls to drop out, even while failing to announce any public schedule for herself.
‘As much as everybody wants to go and push me out, I’m not ready to get out yet,’ she told Fox & Friends.
She made some of the same arguments that Hillary Clinton did when she kept up her 2008 run against Barack Obama with an appeal that stressed her pathbreaking run.
‘I’m still sitting there fighting for the people that want a voice, so they deserve that,’ Haley added.
Money didn’t appear to be an issue. She had $14 million in the bank to start the year, and she said she raised $12 million in February alone.
She outraised Trump in January and publicly pointed to him spending $50 million on legal fees taken from entities supporting his campaign.
But American for Prosperity Action, the powerful network backed by billionaire Charles Koch, announced it was pausing support after Haley lost her home state.