Former President Trump lashed out at fellow GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Super Tuesday, calling her “crazy” and a “very angry person.”
During an interview on “The Mark Levin Show,” Trump took aim at Haley for daring to launch a presidential bid against him after she previously said she would not. His comments came before sources told The Hill that the former South Carolina governor would suspend her campaign.
“For two-and-a-half years, she said, ‘I will never, ever run against this president. He was the greatest president in my lifetime. He was a great president. I will never run,’ and that went on for a couple years, and that was nice. You know, I thought that was respectful, very nice,” Trump said. “And then I started hearing that maybe she’ll run, and then she announces she’s gonna run.”
“And at the beginning she was very nice, very respectful, and then — she’s gone crazy, and I’ve never seen anything like it,” he continued in the interview, highlighted by Mediaite. “She holds up a piece of paper which is false, tells a lot of false things.”
Trump also accused Haley, who previously served as ambassador to the United Nations during his administration, of lying about her performance against President Biden in polls — referencing when she claimed she would outperform Trump in a general election match-up against President Biden.
“I’m the one that’s beating him by so much, and she goes out, and she’s, she’s become really angry,” the former president added. “And I think it’s that she’s just getting nowhere.”
In The Hill/Decision Desk HQ’s latest polling average of hypothetical general election match-ups, Trump leads Biden by 2.1 percentage points in a head-to-head general election race, whereas Haley leads Biden by 3.7 percentage points in a head-to-head general election race.
Trump also criticized Haley for celebrating her third-place finish in Iowa, and suggested Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who placed second in Iowa before suspending his own bid in January and endorsing Trump, was also blindsided by her remarks.
The former president’s description of what he imagined DeSantis’s reply to be mirrored his own response in New Hampshire, where he railed against Haley for celebrating her strong performance, even though she lost.
“She runs up on the stage and starts claiming victory, and he didn’t know what hit him. He couldn’t believe it,” Trump said of DeSantis. “And that was a big deal. You know, who was going to come in second, and that was actually a very big deal psychologically. And I could just see this guy, he said, ‘Hey, we won. We came in second,’ and she’s standing on stage claiming victory.”
“Now she — she’s gone haywire. She hasn’t lost too many elections, I guess. And she’s getting nowhere. She’s actually going down. Her numbers are going down,” he continued. “And she’s a very angry person. So we’ll see if she straightens out. Maybe she will.”
The Hill has reached out to Haley’s campaign for a response.