Clemson, S.C.: Nikki Haley, U.N. ambassador under President Donald Trump, said Tuesday that she would take the Christmas holiday to mull a possible 2024 presidential bid, contradicting her statement last year that she wouldn’t enter the race if Trump opted to run again.
“We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is,” the former South Carolina governor said during an event at her alma mater, Clemson University, sponsored by Turning Point USA. “If we decide to get into it, we’ll put 1,000 percent in, and we’ll finish it.”
The comments resembled Haley’s remarks at last week’s Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Las Vegas, where she was among 10 potential Republican White House hopefuls to make their pitches in the GOP’s first major confab of the 2024 election cycle.
“I’ve never lost an election, and I’m not going to start now,” Haley said, in a line she repeated Tuesday at Clemson.
But Haley’s new tone stands in stark contrast with April 2021, when she replied “yes” when asked during a visit to a historically Black university in her home state if she would support a future Trump presidential campaign. Haley also then noted that she would not seek her party’s nomination if Trump were also running.
Haley, who served six years as South Carolina’s governor before Trump asked her to join his Cabinet, was U.N. ambassador for two years before leaving on her own accord.
Like other Trump administration officials considering presidential bids, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Haley has walked a tightrope between criticism and praise of the former president. Following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Haley said Trump had been “badly wrong” in stoking the crowd before the riot and that his “actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.”
