Haley accuses Biden of giving ‘offensive’ speech at the church where racist mass shooting occurred
DES MOINES, Iowa — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Monday night took aim at the Democrat she would like to face in the November election, calling it “insulting” that President Joe Biden gave “a political speech” at the South Carolina church where nine Black parishioners were killed. a racist attack from 2015.
“For Biden to show up there and give a political speech is offensive in and of itself,” the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor said during a Fox News town hall in Des Moines, Iowa. “I don’t need someone who worked with segregationists in the 1970s and has made racist comments throughout his career, lecturing me or anyone else in South Carolina about what it means to be racism, slavery or anything anything else that has to do with the Civil War.”
Biden was in Haley’s home state on Monday, giving jabs at some of his potential Republican primary opponents without naming them. He climbed the pulpit at Mother Emanuel, a historic AME church in Charleston, where nine black parishioners were killed by a white gunman in June 2015 as they prayed during a Wednesday night Bible study.
As governor at the time of the shooting, Haley gained national attention for her response, which included signing legislation to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds. During her previous campaigns, Haley had argued against removing the flag, portraying an opponent’s call for it as a political stunt.
But Haley has been on the defensive for not explicitly mentioning slavery as the root cause of the Civil War when the question was asked at a campaign event. Her campaign responded Monday with a list of comments attributed to Biden that showed him to be racially insensitive.
During his speech Monday, Biden called it a “lie” that the war was about states’ rights.
“So let me be clear, for those who don’t seem to know: slavery was the cause of the Civil War,” Biden said. “That is non-negotiable.”
Haley’s campaign followed Biden’s speech by sending reporters a timeline called “Biden’s Racial Comments and Actions,” such as a 1974 reference to himself as “a token Black” in the Senate; saying in 1981 that George Wallace, the segregationist former governor of Alabama, was “right about some things”; and in 2007 he said then-Sen. Barack Obama was “the first mainstream African American who is articulate, bright, clean and a nice man.”
Biden’s re-election campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Haley’s town hall came a week ahead of the kickoff of the Iowa caucuses, the first official voting of the 2024 nominating cycle.
There is a lot at stake for Haley. Amid an escalating battle for second place behind Republican front-runner Donald Trump, she and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have increasingly traded blows as they strive to draw distinctions between themselves and the mantle as the best alternative to secure for Trump.
On Monday, Trump’s super PAC released a video featuring an old clip of the then-South Carolina governor in which he urged the public not to label people who entered the US illegally as “criminals.” The comments came a month after Trump’s 2015 campaign launch speech, in which he said immigrants from Mexico brought drugs and crime with them.
DeSantis’ campaign also released an ad to Iowa caucus-goers, calling out Haley for her recent comments to New Hampshire voters that they would have a chance to “correct” the Iowa caucus-goers’ decision – a comment that might indicate that she does not. just don’t expect to win Iowa, but don’t expect her to finish second, ahead of DeSantis, either.
Haley on Monday repeatedly accused DeSantis of “lying because he’s losing” and said Trump’s allies were deliberately misinterpreting things she had said.
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.