You would think a presidential candidate can handle questions from kids. Unfortunately, this time, you’d be dead wrong.
And this top Republican got completely humiliated by this question from a child.
Nikki Haley might want to avoid town halls in New Hampshire for a while.
After spending Thursday morning explaining why she didn’t mention slavery as a major cause of the Civil War at an event the night before, the former South Carolina governor was called on the carpet in the afternoon by a 9-year-old boy who questioned her decision to serve in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Haley, 51, served as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations for 23 months during the 45th president’s presidency and has maintained that the 77-year-old was the correct leader for the moment.
During her presidential campaign, however, Haley stated that Trump would be ineffectual in a second term because of the “chaos” he creates.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has accused Haley of being too soft on Trump, even going so far as to imply she’s trying to position herself for a 2028 presidential run.
“Chris Christie thinks you’re a flip-flopper on the Donald Trump issue, and honestly, I agree with him. You’re basically the new John Kerry,” the child told Haley in the ski town of North Conway as the audience laughed. “How can you change your opinion like that in just eight years, and will you pardon Donald Trump?”
Haley, 51, responded by claiming that both “anti-Trumpers” and “pro-Trumpers” had criticized her handling of the previous president.
“I told you that I agreed with a lot of his policies. But do I think he’s the right president to go forward? No,” Haley said. “We can’t handle the chaos anymore.”
Haley then went after Christie, calling him “obsessed” with the former president.
“I mean God bless him, he’s a friend. He’s obsessed with Trump,” she said. “He sleeps, eats and breathes it, every day. I’m thinking bigger than that. If we do that, we’re no different than Trump.”
Haley reportedly stated that she would forgive Trump for any purported crimes he committed “in the interest of the country,” after reprimanding the child for being “no John Kerry.”
“What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country,” she went on to say.
Kerry, the former Massachusetts senator, onetime secretary of state, and President Biden’s current special climate envoy, spent much of his 2004 presidential campaign fighting allegations that he had changed his mind about opposing the war in Iraq after voting to authorize the use of military force against Saddam Hussein’s government.
Haley made the comments while under widespread criticism for failing to acknowledge chattel slavery as a significant cause of the Civil War in response to an audience question at a Berlin town hall on Wednesday night.
She began her visit in North Conway by addressing the error, saying that the war was “of course” about slavery, but there was a “bigger issue.”
“We did the right thing and slavery is no more,” she said. “But the lessons of what that bigger issue with the Civil War is that — let’s not forget what came out of that — which is government’s role, individual liberties, freedom for every single person, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do and be anything you want to be without anyone or government getting in your way.
“That should be the goal of what we always and try to take away from that, right?”
Haley also attempted to make amends for her error by stating that Biden and the Democratic Party sent a “plant” to submit the Civil War topic in order to derail her event.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
