COLUMBIA, S.C. — Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is part of her closing arguments in New Hampshire before Tuesday’s primaries with words of support from the mother of Otto Warmbier, the American student who died in 2017 after being jailed by North Korea.
In the three-minute television ad airing Monday, Cindy Warmbier says that when Haley served as U.N. ambassador at the time, he “told us to be loud and fight back, fight for justice, fight for ourselves and fight for Otto.”
The words come from Cindy Warmbier’s speech at the launch of Haley’s presidential campaign in Charleston, South Carolina, almost a year ago. The 22-year-old son of Cindy Warmbier, who was released by North Korea while in a coma after nearly a year and a half of captivity, died days after returning to the United States in June 2017. The University of Virginia student from Ohio had been sentenced to 15 years in prison with hard labor on charges of subversion in connection with trying to steal a propaganda banner while visiting a tour group.
Haley hopes a strong performance in New Hampshire will give her a boost in her home state of South Carolina, which has historically been influential in determining the eventual nominee. The South Carolina primary is on February 24.
Haley, who finished behind former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, has described the next chapter of her campaign as a “two-person race” between Trump and herself.
In releasing the ad, Haley’s campaign noted that while Trump was “instrumental in bringing Otto’s body home and holding North Korea accountable,” the then-president overshadowed that achievement by speaking positively about the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and publicly absolving him of wrongdoing that led to Warmbier’s death. Trump said in 2019 that he “took Kim at his word” that Kim was unaware of the alleged abuse of the American student.
Haley, who by then had left his administration, contradicted her former boss, posting on social media that “Americans know the cruelty inflicted on Otto Warmbier by the North Korean regime.”
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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP