Thursday on Fox News Channel’s “The Faulkner Focus, former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) reacted to the backlash she received from CNN “New Day” host Brianna Keilar for declaring the United States is not a racist nation.
Keilar accused Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, of whitewashing the United States’ history when it comes to race relations in an effort to appease the GOP base.
Haley said that the “liberal media can’t stand it” when a black or brown Republican praises America and says the country isn’t racist.
“Well, it sounds like I hit a nerve,” Haley said of Keilar’s criticism. “Secondly, it’s amazing to me how the liberal media can’t stand it when someone … black or brown happens to talk about the fact that America is the best country in the world — the fact we’re blessed to be free and blessed to live in America. I’m going to keep saying it. We should all talk about the blessings of America. We’re not a perfect country, but every day our focus is to make today better than yesterday, and that’s how I was raised. I was raised to have hope. I was raised that America did have challenges as we were going, but also was raised to live and see that me, a brown family in a small southern rural town, the people when they used to whisper about us or used to exclude us, I saw something very American happen because they started to smile at us. They started to talk to us, and they welcomed us in. And that’s the part of America that I was raised in.”
She continued, “That’s the part of America I’m proud of. And that same state elected me as the first female and first minority governor, and you can’t say that we’re a racist country. You just can’t. And they can’t stand it when a brown Republican says that.”
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