Haley on Pardoning Trump: I Don’t Want Division over a President Serving Years in Jail

Former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that she would consider pardoning former President Donald Trump to end the division “over the fact that we have a president serving years in jail over a documents trial.”

Partial transcript as follows:

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’ve said in the past, though, you would be inclined to pardon Donald Trump. That assumes he’ll be convicted, that assumes he had something to hide here. Has your position changed? Would you still pardon him?

HALEY: Well, I’ve- what I’ve said is if he is found guilty, that is certainly showing that it was dangerous to our national security, but I’ll take you back to Nixon and Ford. I mean, I think that one of the things we have to look at is not what’s in the best interest of, you know, the president, but what’s in the best interest of the country. We have to move forward. We’ve got to quit living in the past, and I don’t want there to be all of this division over the fact that we have a president serving years in jail over a documents trial. I want all of this to go away. It’s why we have to have a new generational leader. It’s why we need to move forward. We can’t keep living with indictments and court cases and vengeance of the past. We’ve got to start going forward. American people are not talking about these indictments. What they want to know is how we’re going to deal with the debt and the reckless spending by Republicans and Democrats, how we’re going to have transparency in our kids’ schools and catch them back up again, how we’re going to fix a lawless border, and how we’re going to make sure that we actually start dealing with national security because America looks so weak right now. Those are the things I hear about in town halls. People are frustrated with the indictments, they’re frustrated with the weaponization. They want to know how government’s going to work for them.

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