Former South Carolina Republican Gov. Nikki Haley responded Friday to critiques from the campaigns of her two chief presidential rivals, Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, while also telling Fox News she stands by her plan to pardon Trump if he is convicted by special counsel Jack Smith.
Haley also reacted to President Biden holding his first major campaign event — a speech in Pennsylvania that invoked George Washington's frigid winter of 1777 at nearby Valley Forge to draw attention to the third anniversary of the January 6 Capitol riot.
Biden illustrated a contrast between Washington willingly giving up the presidency after two terms with Trump-supporting rioters marching past the first president's portrait in the Capitol to help the 45th wrongly remain in power.
On "America Reports," Haley said she stands by a comment at a recent television town hall that she would pardon Trump for the same reason former President Ford preemptively pardoned Richard Nixon — to "move the country forward" and past controversy.
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However, she said she would not likely offer a preemptive pardon as Ford did because Trump might not be found guilty, and he would likely want the cases to play out.
"I think you only do it if someone's found guilty," she said.
"The last thing we want to see is an 80-year-old former president sitting in jail. Instead, we want to say, ‘OK, how do we put the past behind us and move forward as a country?’ And I think that by pardoning him, that absolutely would move the country forward instead of dividing it further."
However, she also ripped into a recent attack ad against her touting the former president, which claimed she and Biden both opposed Trump border security measures such as a wall.
"Isn't that sweet of him, spending so much time and money against me?" Haley quipped.
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"First of all, it's a complete lie. I didn't say I opposed the border wall. I said I opposed just doing a border wall. I said that we have to do more than that. That's defunding sanctuary cities. That's putting 25,000 Border Patrol and ICE agents on the ground… " she said.
Haley also criticized DeSantis' recent invoking of her during a speech in Cumming, Iowa.
"Not Ronald Reagan, not Margaret Thatcher. She said Hillary Clinton was her inspiration for running for office. We don't need another Hillary Clinton in this country, I can tell you that," DeSantis said.
Haley replied that the popular Florida governor is "getting desperate" and is "lying because he's losing."
She said the true outline of DeSantis' reference was her attendance at a women's leadership forum prior to her entrance into politics.
Clinton was one of the speakers at the event, and Haley recounted the former first lady telling the crowd that "for all the reasons people tell you not to run, those are all the reasons that you should."
"So when I spoke about it, if you took it all in context, I said I don't agree with a single thing [Clinton] believes in, but this is what happened and this is how I got involved in politics," Haley said. "Look, [DeSantis is] lying because he's losing."
"My record speaks for itself, and it shows that we're surging, and that's why they're giving us all the attention."
