Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley ended 24 hours in New Hampshire she’d rather forget by facing off against a 9-year-old who compared her to John Kerry Thursday afternoon.
The night before, Haley stuck her foot in her mouth at a New Hampshire town hall when asked what caused the Civil War and then failed to mention slavery.
She spent the bulk of Thursday in the Granite State cleaning up those comments before heading to North Conway where she faced audience members’ questions yet again.
‘So Chris Christie think that you’re a flip-flopper on the Donald Trump issue,’ a child named Adam boldly told her. ‘And honestly, I agree with him. You’re basically the new John Kerry,’ the kid said to laughs.
Kerry was the Democrats’ 2004 presidential nominee, who was criticized for constantly changing his position, and lost to incumbent Republican President George W. Bush.
Nikki Haley was confronted by a 9-year-old at a town hall Thursday in North Conway, New Hampshire, who compared her to ‘flip-flopper’ John Kerry on the issue of support for former President Donald Trump
‘How can you change your opinion like that in just eight years and will you pardon Donald Trump?’ the 9-year-old then asked.
Christie, who is also running for the Republican nomination, has been critical of Haley for being too soft on Trump, her former boss.
Haley commended the youngster and said that politics is often about ‘distraction.’
She answered that she hasn’t been able to appease ‘anti-Trumpers’ nor ‘pro-Trumpers’ with her stance on the ex-president, who is leading the GOP primary pack.
‘I don’t you that I agred with a lot of his policies. But do I think he’s the right president to go foward? No,’ Haley answered. ‘We can’t handle the chaos anymore.’
She also used the question to go after Christie.
‘I mean God bless him, he’s a friend. He’s obsessed with Trump,’ Haley said. ‘He sleeps, eats and breaths it, every day.’
Christie was one of only a handful of GOP hopefuls to base his run off being a Trump critic.
‘I’m thinking bigger than that,’ Haley said. ‘If we do that, we’re no different than Trump.’
Nikki Haley cleaned-up her town hall blunder leaving slavery out as a reason for the Civil War by claiming ‘that’s the easy part’ – and suggested the person who asked the question was a ‘plant’
Earlier Thursday, Haley was clarifying that her comments about the Civil War didn’t mention slavery because ‘that’s the easy part.’
Haley told CNN that it’s ‘unquestioned’ that the Civil War was about slavery, adding: ‘But it was also more than that.’
‘It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government,’ she insisted.
She also said in an interview with Pulse of New Hampshire radio show that she was answering the question by putting it into the context of what it means to Americans in the present day.
‘Of course the Civil War was about slavery. We know that. That’s the easy part of it,’ Haley said Thursday morning. ‘What I was saying was: What does it mean to us today?’
‘What it means to us today is about freedom. That’s what that was all about,’ the former United Nations Ambassador said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ communications director said Haley’s damage control was weak.
‘I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are, and I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people,’ she said
Haley’s refusal to acknowledge this caught the ire of many across the political spectrum
‘Embarrassing cleanup attempt,’ Andrew Romeo wrote on X. ‘Even if that is true…If she can’t handle a question as basic as the cause of the Civil War, what does she think is going to happen to her in a general election.’
‘The Democrats would eat her lunch,’ he added.
Critics included her 2024 Republican competitors, but also President Joe Biden who quipped on X, formerly Twitter: ‘It was about slavery.’
The former governor for South Carolina also insisted Thursday morning that the person who prompted the response was sent as a plant in an effort to get media to attack her as her poll figures skyrocket in New Hampshire.
She jokingly told the audience member asking the question Wednesday: ‘Well, don’t come with an easy question.’
She then claimed that the Civil War was fought for freedom and ideological differences in how governments are supposed to work.
‘I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms of what people could and couldn’t do.’
Historians generally agree that slavery, and the divided opinions of Northern and Southern states over whether to abolish it, was the primary cause of the Civil War
Donald Trump is currently leading the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination – and the ex-president has not ruled out tapping Haley as his running mate
The White House hopeful, currently fighting for a distant second place after Trump with DeSantis, then went on a tangent about government overreach and civil liberties.
‘I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are, and I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people.
‘It was never meant to be all things to all people. Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life.
‘They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do. They don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom.
‘We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.’
Following the tangent, she tried to turn the question back to the voter, who told her that he isn’t the one running for the Oval Office in 2024.
He is then heard saying: ‘In 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you would answer that question without mentioning the word slavery.’
Haley asks him: ‘What do you want me to say about slavery? Next question.’
New Hampshire holds the first-in-the-nation primary, held just days after the Iowa caucuses, which makes it important for those vying for the nomination to run for president.
With just 26 days until the Granite State’s elections, Haley is surging in the polls with one survey showing her trailing Trump by only 4 percent with 29 percent support among Republican voters.
She clarified Thursday that she is well aware that slavery was a reason for the Civil War.
Polling shows Haley is now within only 4 percentage points of Trump with just 26 days until the New Hampshire primary elections on January 23 – and aggregated data from FiveThirtyEight shows that Haley may soon overtake Ron DeSantis to be second place nationally
Historians generally agree that slavery, and the divided opinions of Northern and Southern states over whether to abolish it, was the primary cause of the Civil War.
The Southern states of the US, including Haley’s home state of South Carolina, were pro-slavery, while Northern states were anti-slavery.
South Carolina’s proclamation outlining its reasons for leaving the Union in 1860 pointed to the ‘increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery’ as a reason for the state removing itself from the Union.
But Haley’s refusal to acknowledge this caught the ire of many across the political spectrum.
Meanwhile, the DeSantis campaign recirculated video of the exchange on social media, adding the comment, ‘Yikes.’
Issues surrounding the origins of the Civil War and its heritage are still much of the fabric of Haley’s home state, and she has been pressed on the war’s origins before.
As she ran for governor in 2010, Haley, in an interview with a now-defunct activist group then known as The Palmetto Patriots, described the war as between two disparate sides fighting for ‘tradition’ and ‘change’ and said the Confederate flag was ‘not something that is racist.’
During that same campaign, she dismissed the need for the flag to come down from the Statehouse grounds, portraying her Democratic rival’s push for its removal as a desperate political stunt.
Five years later, Haley urged lawmakers to remove the flag from its perch near a Confederate soldier monument following a mass shooting in which a white gunman killed eight Black church members who were attending Bible study.
At the time, Haley said the flag had been ‘hijacked’ by the shooter from those who saw the flag as symbolizing ‘sacrifice and heritage.’
Aggregated polling data from FiveThirtyEight shows that, nationally, Haley may soon overtake Ron DeSantis to be second place in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Despite this, she has a long way to go to beat Donald Trump, who currently has 61.2% of Republicans pledged to vote for him.
Even in her home state, Haley is trailing far behind, with less than half the share of votes that Trump has.