Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Monday defended her decision to back former President Trump as “based on substance” after former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) criticized her position.
Cheney, a vocal GOP critic of Trump who officially threw her support behind Vice President Harris last week, said Sunday that she “can’t understand” Haley’s position on the 2024 race in “any kind of a principled way” given the former ambassador’s intense criticism of Trump during her own presidential bid earlier this year.
Haley pushed back, saying her decision was, in fact, principled.
“I respect her decision, but she can’t say my decision is not principled. It actually is. We can either vote based on style or we can vote on substance. I’m voting based on substance. I’m looking at the fact we can’t live the next four years like we did the last four years,” Haley said Monday on Fox News’s “FOX and Friends.”
Haley, a former United Nations ambassador and the former governor of South Carolina, said the contrast of Trump and Harris’s policies is “no contest.”
“Harris raised taxes. Trump reduced taxes. Harris wants to stop any energy production. Trump built it up,” she said. “Harris is weak on national security. Trump was strong on national security. Harris has allowed the border to be infiltrated by 8 million people. Trump was much harder on the border. This is about my family. This is about America. These are about issues.”
Haley publicly said she would vote for Trump in May, months after she suspended her GOP presidential bid amid low polling numbers. During her bid, she waged a series of attacks against Trump and said earlier this year she came to the decision to vote for Trump because of policy agreements.
“We should be very clear — if you don’t like him, say you don’t like him. But you can’t say that his policies are worse than Kamala Harris’s. That’s just not a fact,” Haley said Monday.
When asked if her support of Trump extends to the point where she would appear on stage with him at rallies, Haley said she is “happy to be helpful.”
“I’ve made it clear to him, a couple of things. One, that he needs to go out and ask for the vote of conservative and moderate Republicans, suburban women, independents, conservative Democrats. This is going to be a tight election. He needs to go say, ‘I need your vote,'” she said. “And the second thing is, I’m on standby. I’m happy to be helpful. I don’t want to see Kamala Harris win.”
When pressed again about going on stage, she said, “Absolutely.”
Cheney and her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney (R), made headlines last week when they both endorsed Harris’s presidential run over Trump.
The younger Cheney on Sunday argued Republicans who are publicly against Trump but not backing Harris must “take the extra step” and endorse the vice president.