Nikki Haley says she will vote for Donald Trump

However, in her first public appearance since exiting the presidential race, Nikki Haley stopped short of calling on her supporters to back Donald Trump.

Former governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Picture: AFP

Nikki Haley, in her first public appearance since dropping out of the Republican presidential race in March, said she planned to vote for former president Donald Trump in November.

The former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador stopped short, however, of calling on her supporters to back Trump following a speech critical of President Biden.

“As a voter, I put my priorities on a president who is going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, who would secure the border — no more excuses,” Haley said Wednesday at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington.

“A president who would support capitalism and freedom. A president who understands we need less debt, not more debt.”

A moderator had asked who would do a better job in the White House between the two presumptive nominees.

On these policies, she said Trump hadn’t been perfect. “But Biden has been a catastrophe, so I will be voting for Trump,” Haley said.

Haley said Trump should do more to win the votes of the Republicans, independents and Democrats who backed her candidacy — a stance she took the morning she dropped out of the presidential race.

“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me, and not assume that they’re just going to be with him,” she said. “I genuinely hope he does that.”

Representatives for the Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is hard to know whether Haley, 52 years old, is part of her party’s future or representative of a last gasp of more traditional Republicanism that favours a hawkish foreign policy, fiscal discipline and limited government.

She still could have a future in presidential politics, but her sharp criticism of Trump in the final two months of her campaign likely will make that possibility challenging while he still has a hold on the party.

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Picture: AFP

In the final months of her presidential bid, she repeatedly called Trump a liar, suggested he was in mental decline because of his age and that he was incapable of winning a general election. Before that period in the campaign, she had mostly tiptoed in her attacks on the former president by suggesting more generically that he brought “chaos” wherever he went.

Trump once had a good working relationship with Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, and described her as “fantastic.”

Their attacks on each other turned especially caustic, however, in the first two months of the year. Trump called her “Birdbrain” and raised questions about the absence of her husband from the campaign trail while he was deployed in Africa with the South Carolina Army National Guard.

Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director, said in a statement that millions of voters backed Haley instead of Trump because they “care deeply about the future of our democracy, standing strong with our allies against foreign adversaries, and working across the aisle to get things done for the American people — while also rejecting the chaos, division and violence that Donald Trump embodies.”

Haley’s voters could play an important role in swing-state contests this fall. Even after dropping out of the race following Super Tuesday, Haley has continued to pick up support in GOP contests, sometimes around 20% of the vote. In Kentucky’s Republican primary on Tuesday, she won about 6% of the vote.

A person close to Haley told The Wall Street Journal earlier this month that she didn’t speak with Trump when she got out of the race on March 6 and two hadn’t done so since. That same person said Wednesday there has been no discussion with the Trump campaign about campaigning on his behalf.

Haley said she plans to visit Israel “very soon” and has been enjoying life since leaving the campaign trail. She said she has taken up running again, has been sleeping more and enjoyed reconnecting with her family.

While she has joined the Hudson Institute, Haley will continue to live in her native state. She is expected to make public appearances for the think tank and help craft and advance foreign-policy positions.

The Wall Street Journal