Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is drawing criticism from her primary opponents and other prominent conservatives after she was asked what caused the Civil War in the United States and failed to mention slavery in her word salad response at an event in New Hampshire Wednesday night.
At the town hall-style event, one attendee asked Haley, “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?” After a nervous breath, she answered the question without mentioning slavery.
“I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Haley said.
The man refused to let her off the hook after she asked what he thought caused the Civil War, emphasizing he was not running for president.
“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are,” Haley added. “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,” she said.
After the voter confronted her about the omission later in the exchange, Haley asked the man, “What do you want me to say about slavery?”
The exchange quickly went viral, leading to intense criticism of Haley from across the political sphere, including from her opponents in the Republican presidential primary and other prominent Republicans.
On Thursday, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy pinned a video of Haley to his X account from the last GOP presidential debate, in which she failed to name three provinces in eastern Ukraine as he challenged her to do.
“Turns out Nikki knows as little about the Civil War as she does about the Ukraine War. But whatever war it was, I’m sure she’s in favor of it,” Ramaswamy quipped.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) also took aim at Haley over her poor response on Wendesday, but it inadvertently put DeSantis in the line of fire.
DeSantis told reporters Thursday that Haley’s answer was “an incomprehensible word salad” and said she “is not a candidate that’s ready for primetime.”
“And she’s gotten a pretty free ride from a lot of the corporate press. The minute that she faces any type of scrutiny, she tends to cave and I think that that’s what you saw yesterday,” DeSantis added.
Soon after the DeSantis WarRoom X account shared its clip of the governor talking to reporters, political strategist Alex Brusewitz pointed out that in July, DeSantis found himself in his own controversy after Florida changed the educational guidelines on slavery. The approved curriculum stated that slaves “developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
“I didn’t do it and I wasn’t involved in it,” DeSantis said of new standards when confronted about them in July. “But I think what they’re doing is, I think that they’re probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith, into doing things later in life.”
He added the curriculum would be grounded in “whatever is factual.”
Brusewitz found hypocrisy in DeSantis’s attack on Haley.
“Team DeSantis is now acting outraged over Nikki Haley’s civil war comments (which were stupid!) but it was just a few months ago that DeSantis was talking about how slavery actually helped black people,” he wrote. “Oh well! Fun watching Nikki and Rob fight for second place!”
The Make America Great Again, Inc. super PAC, which supports former President Donald Trump, also weighed in an emailed release, stating that Haley “is clearly not ready for primetime.”
Republican reactions rolled in from beyond the 2024 campaign trail. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) put out a clever tweet noting that Democrats revolted after the election of Republican President Abraham Lincoln “rather than accept minor restrictions on the expansion of slavery to the western territories,” Cotton wrote.
“And today, Democrats would sooner tear the country apart than treat all citizens equally before the law, regardless of color,” he added in a follow-up tweet.
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who supports Trump, took a more direct swipe at Haley in his response.
“Psst Nikki… the answer is slavery PERIOD,” he wrote in a post on X, adding, “This really doesn’t matter because Trump is going to be the nominee. Trump 2024!”
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