Haley ups calls for new generational leader: ‘Gotta leave the baggage and negativity behind’

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley reupped her call for a “new generational leader” on Saturday, as she and a growing field of 2024 GOP presidential candidates attempt to separate themselves from former President Trump.

“We’ve got to start doing this in a way that we can win a general election,” Haley said at Sen. Joni Ernst’s (R-Iowa) annual Roast and Ride fundraiser in Des Moines. “It’s time for a new generational leader.”

“We’ve gotta leave the baggage and negativity behind,” she continued. “We’ve got a country to save.”

The former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has made age and mental fitness a key issue in her campaign. She has repeatedly called for “mental competency tests” for politicians over 75 years old, taking aim at both 76-year-old Trump and 80-year-old President Biden.

“We’re ready — ready to move past the stale ideas and faded names of the past,” Haley said at a campaign rally in February. “And we are more than ready for a new generation to lead us into the future.”

She has previously used the concept of “new generational leadership” to separate herself from Trump, who is polling well ahead of the rest of the Republican field.

“Look at everything that’s wrong in this country and tell me we don’t need new leadership,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity, when asked about her differences with the former president. “But the difference is we need new generational leadership. We have to leave the status quo.”

“We have to leave this chaos behind and we’ve gotta start talking about the future,” she added at the time.

Haley has also taken the most direct aim at Biden’s age, suggesting that it is unlikely that “he would make it to 86 years old” — the age he would be at the end of a second term.