Nikki Haley rips Trump’s lawyers’ ‘ridiculous’ claim that killing political rivals falls under presidential immunity

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley called the claim by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers that a president could kill a political rival “ridiculous” Wednesday night during the Republican presidential debate.

Trump again skipped the debate, which was held in Des Moines and featured only Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on stage.

CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked Haley about the breathtaking moment during Tuesday’s court appearance in DC, in which Trump’s lawyer argued that a president would be immune from prosecution unless he or she was first convicted in the Senate in an impeachment process – no matter how serious the crime.

‘No, that’s ridiculous. That is completely ridiculous,” the former South Carolina governor said. “I mean, we need to use some common sense here. You can’t kill a political rival and claim immunity from a president.”

Although Haley has said during the campaign that Trump was the right president at the right time, she added Wednesday, “I think we have to start doing things that are right.”

“We need to look at what President Trump has done,” she continued. ‘If you look at the past few years, our country is completely divided. It’s divided over extremes, it’s divided over hate, it’s divided over the fact that people think if someone disagrees with you, they’re bad.”

“Now we have leaders in our country who decide who is good and who is bad, who is right and who is wrong. That’s not what a leader does,” she said.

She argued that true leaders bring out the best in people “and show them the way forward.”

‘That’s what we need abroad. We don’t need this chaos anymore,” she added. “We need someone to be a next generation leader.”

The 51-year-old’s response was one of the sharpest attacks she made on the 77-year-old Trump, under whom she served at the United Nations.

During Trump’s day in court Tuesday, as his lawyers try to win him immunity from charges filed by special counsel Jack Smith related to Jan. 6 and 2020 election interference, Judge Florence Pan asked Trump attorney John Sauer how far the presidential immunity could reach.

“Could a president who ordered SEAL Team 6 to assassinate a political rival, who has not been impeached, face criminal charges,” Pan asked, adding that this was a “yes-or-no question.”

Former President Donald Trump skipped Wednesday night’s Republican debate — as he has skipped all GOP debates thus far — and took part in a Fox News town hall across town in Des Moines

Former President Donald Trump appears in a court filing Tuesday, in which his lawyer argues that a president should be convicted during an impeachment trial to face charges — including for killing a political rival

Sauer explained that prosecution would only be allowed if the president had been impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted in the Senate.

In both of Trump’s impeachment trials, he was unseated by the Senate, requiring a two-thirds vote — a high bar when the Senate has been roughly evenly divided between members of the two parties in recent years.

When DeSantis was asked about Trump’s lawyer’s bold claim, he told Tapper, “That lawyer has clearly given away the case on that basis and on that explanation.”

Florida’s governor predicted the case would go to trial “before a stacked, left-leaning DC jury of all Democrats.”

DeSantis rejected the validity of the charges and predicted, “I don’t think he’ll get through that.”

“And what are we going to do as Republicans when it comes to who we nominate?” DeSantis asked.

“If Trump is the nominee, it’s going to be about January 6, legal issues, criminal trials — the Democrats and the media would love to get involved in that,” he said.