Nikki Haley suspends presidential campaign, doesn't yet endorse Trump
The Associated Press | Posted: March 6, 2024 11:45 AM | Last Updated: March 7, 2024
Trump, Biden both invite Haley voters to support their campaigns
Nikki Haley suspended her presidential campaign Wednesday after being soundly defeated across the country on Super Tuesday, leaving Donald Trump as the last remaining major candidate for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Haley congratulated Trump in a brief speech in Charleston, S.C., and said "in all likelihood" the former president would be the nominee, for a third consecutive time.
But Haley did not immediately endorse Trump, instead calling on him to unite the party.
"It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that," she said. "At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people."
Haley's departure clears Trump to focus solely on his likely rematch in November with President Joe Biden. Haley notched primary wins in recent days in D.C. and Vermont, but the former president is on track to reach the necessary 1,215 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination later this month.
Haley's defeat marks a painful blow to voters, donors and Republican Party officials who opposed Trump and his fiery brand of "Make America Great Again" politics.
McConnell to support Trump
She was especially popular among moderates and college-educated voters, constituencies that play a pivotal role in general elections, but represent a minority of Republican primary voters.
Biden praised Haley's "courage" in a statement.
"Haley was willing to speak the truth about Trump; about the chaos that always follows him, about his inability to see right from wrong, about his cowering before [Russian President] Vladimir Putin," said Biden. "Donald Trump made it clear he doesn't want Nikki Haley's supporters. I want to be clear: There is a place for them in my campaign."
While asserting, without evidence, that "much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats," Trump in a social media post Wednesday morning said he "would further like to invite all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation."
Trump did score the endorsement on Wednesday of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell.
WATCH l Super Tuesday seems to confirm the inevitable:
"It is abundantly clear that former President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States," McConnell said in the statement. "It should come as no surprise that as nominee, he will have my support."
The two men had not spoken since late 2020 when McConnell declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner of that year's presidential election. McConnell then said he held Trump "morally responsible" for the Jan. 6, 2021 mob siege of the Capitol..
But more recently, their teams had reopened talks about an endorsement.
Lost donors in recent weeks
Haley was muted in her criticism of Trump until other candidates dropped out of the Republican primary. She spent recent weeks aggressively warning the GOP against embracing Trump, whom she argued was far too consumed by chaos and personal grievance to defeat Biden in the general election this fall.
Trump faces 91 criminal counts across four indictments, which Haley warned would threaten the party's overall prospects in November.
"All of this chaos will only lead to more losses for Republicans up and down the ticket," she said in a social media post last month.
Multiple polls forecast her defeating Biden by a greater margin than Trump, but she could not break through with the party's passionate, Trump-loyal base.
Haley, 52, served as South Carolina's governor from 2011 until she was selected by Trump to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a move that surprised some observers given her lack of foreign policy experience at the time. She served for just under two years in the role, and appeared to be one of the few Trump cabinet departures to leave on amicable terms with the then-president.
Things got personal between the candidates last month after Trump criticized her husband, Michael, for not appearing on the campaign trail. Michael Haley is currently on deployment supporting U.S. Africa Command, as an officer of South Carolina's Army National Guard.
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Haley called the comments about her husband "disgusting."
Haley continued on in the campaign even after losing her home state of South Carolina late last month, but influential donor Charles Koch and others said they would discontinue their contributions to her campaign.
Haley in 2021 said she wouldn't run for president in the next cycle, but changed her mind. In her February 2023 launch, she said the country needed "generational change."