Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has not appeared with former President Donald Trump on the campaign trail since she dropped her bid challenging him and offered her endorsement, but she is giving her former rival a last-minute push.
Writing in an essay for the Wall Street Journal, she encouraged voters to show up and support Trump on Election Day. The Sunday call was part of a final effort by Trump’s mash-up of supporters trying to put aside past differences and elect the Republican nominee. Haley used the opportunity to paint a future Trump administration as an improvement on what the country has experienced the last four years under President Joe Biden.
Haley acknowledged the reality that Trump is divisive and argued that the voters who are least split on whether they love or hate the former president will be the ones who can swing the election in his favor. She directed her message to undecided voters.
“They like much of what he did as president and agree with most of his policies. But they dislike his tone and can’t condone his excesses, such as his conduct on Jan. 6, 2021,” Haley said. “This third group of Americans will determine whether the former president returns to the White House.”
Haley went on to highlight the last four years of the Biden administration, pointing to the huge spending toward the end of the COVID-19 pandemic that she said created the dire economic situation voters feel they are in now.
“Americans today on average face some $13,000 in higher annual costs than they did four years ago. Prices on nearly everything—food, gasoline, utility bills, insurance—have gone up,” Haley wrote. “This is the direct result of the Biden-Harris agenda, which stoked inflation and stuck families with the bill.”
Haley also pointed to the national debt rising as a result of Vice President Kamala Harris‘s tiebreaking vote on the “grossly misnamed” American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act, writing, “despite its title, the latter is still boosting inflation.”
Since the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law in August 2022, inflation has steadily lowered, falling to 2.1% in September 2024 from 9% in June 2022.
Haley’s call to support Trump was tepid, though she took a direct swipe at what a future Harris administration would look like, noting that she would “make America’s fiscal crisis even worse ” and linking her to the Biden administration’s foreign policy woes.
Haley brought up Biden’s decision to move U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, writing that it “not only created a new terrorist state; it also signaled weakness that sparked Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
Haley continued, “Their appeasement of Iran has enriched that despotic regime and emboldened it to pursue war with Israel through its terrorist proxies.” She also referred to Biden’s stance against China as “weakness.”
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She was quick to pronounce that a future Trump administration “wouldn’t be perfect” but that she agrees with Trump “most of the time. … I disagree with Ms. Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call.”
“But I agree with Mr. Trump that we need to keep taxes low and cut them more,” Haley wrote. “I agree that we need to roll back trillions of dollars in special-interest handouts. I agree that we need to expand American energy to empower our families and job creators while making us less dependent on foreign energy.”