Presidential candidate Nikki Haley vowed Sunday to pardon former President Donald Trump if she defeated him in the Republican primaries and President Joe Biden in November.
Despite trying to remain tough as the candidate’s main opponent, Haley previously hinted she would pardon Trump at a town hall before finishing third to Trump in the Iowa Caucuses.
Just six days ahead of a possible primary in her home state of South Carolina, where Trump is heavily favored, she confirmed that if the former president is found guilty, she would pardon him to unite America.
“I would pardon Donald Trump because I think it’s important for the country to move forward,” she said at a town hall in South Carolina on Sunday.
Trump faces more than a half-dozen lawsuits related to election interference, the Jan. 6 riots and falsifying corporate records.
Presidential candidate Nikki Haley vowed Sunday to pardon former President Donald Trump if she were to defeat him in the Republican primaries and President Joe Biden in November
“We have to leave the negativity and the baggage behind us. I don’t want this country to be further divided. “I don’t think it’s in the best interest of America to have an 80-year-old president sitting in jail and making everyone angry about it,” she added.
She conceded that pardoning Trump would not be a “matter of innocence or guilt” because it “means he would already have been found guilty,” but said releasing him would be in the best interests of the nation.
“I think this is the time that we need to move forward and get this out of the way,” she said.
Haley, the former South Carolina governor who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, tried to bring her foreign policy to the stage as she hammered Trump on his relationship with China.
She called for a ban on Chinese-owned TikTok, and while she acknowledged that President Biden should be ashamed of himself for posting on the platform ahead of the Super Bowl, in her view Trump is no good on the issue either .
“President Trump said he would ban TikTok, and when President Xi asked him not to, it fell by the wayside,” she said.
‘We should have banned it from the start. It’s incredibly dangerous.’
Despite admitting that the Republican Party had not given enough consideration to young people and Gen Z, she said of their favorite social platform: “America cannot be the last country to ban TikTok.”
Trump faces more than a half-dozen lawsuits related to election interference, the January 6 riots and falsifying corporate records
Just six days ahead of a possible primary in her home state of South Carolina, where Trump is heavily favored, Haley confirmed at a town hall that if the former president is found guilty, she would pardon him to unite America.
Haley has often criticized the app’s influence on Generation Z, saying it led to them seeing “pro-Hamas” content in the wake of the terrorist attack on Israel last October.
She also criticized what she sees as Trump’s close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny last week.
“I think that’s why it was so damaging when Trump said he would side with Putin and actually encourage him to invade NATO allies, instead of standing with our allies,” she added.
Although there are civil cases among them, Trump faces the possibility of prison time in some cases if convicted.
Haley, who was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has previously said the pardon would be in vain compared to the one Gerald Ford granted to Richard Nixon in 1974.
The former governor of South Carolina lost the primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. In the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Trump has 63 delegates, compared to Haley’s 17.
She now plans to attract more delegates in South Carolina next week — based on the fact that she has been elected governor twice and is popular among Republicans in the Palmetto State. But polls show Trump still far ahead of Haley in the South Carolina primary.
The former ambassador’s campaign emphasized that it plans to continue at least until Super Tuesday, when 15 different states will go to the polls in their respective primaries.