In a rare gesture, the White House praised Indian American South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for showing “courage” in her response to President Barack Obama’s January 12 State of the Union address.
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Born Nimrata “Nikki” Randhawa to Sikh immigrant parents from India, Haley will give the Republican response to Obama’s final annual address to the Congress Tuesday night.
“Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk”, she said.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley this week called for more civility in the conduct of her party’s raucous Republican presidential nomination contest, but her plea so far has only served to inflame tensions among the party’s warring factions. “I’m really angry because we’re being led by very stupid people that don’t know what they’re doing”. She also hewed closely to GOP demands in the immigration debate, saying: “That does not mean we just flat out open our borders”, and said the USA should refuse entry to refugees “whose intentions can not be determined”.
Haley’s selection, the Observer said, is seen as part of the Republican Party’s attempts to win over female voters, who will have a chance to elect the first female president if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee.
Trump, appearing on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday, struck back.
“She was willing to do something a lot of other leading Republicans have been unwilling to do, which is to actually articulate a commitment for American values that some leading Republican presidential candidates are speaking out against”, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday.
“Nikki Haley says ‘welcoming properly vetted legal immigrants, regardless of religion.’ Translation: let in all the Muslims”, Coulter tweeted.
A new NBC/WSJ poll has Trump leading nationally, earning 33 percent, or one in three Republican votes. Last weekend he helped convene an anti-poverty summit with some of the GOP presidential candidates – Trump was absent – where he pressed for “a safety net that is created to help get people out of poverty”. “It still exists. It is up to us to return to it”, Haley said. And she did nothing to dash that hope in comments she made today noting policy disagreements with Marco Rubio on immigration policy (“Marco Rubio believes in amnesty, and I don’t”) and with Jeb Bush on Common Core.
Haley was among the dozens of Republican governors in November who requested the Obama administration not resettle Syrian refugees in their states, citing concerns over the vetting process in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris.
That concession effectively matched the one from Obama, who admitted to Congress he’d not fulfilled his 2008 campaign promise to end “the rancor and suspicion between the parties”.
Haley’s remarks apparently made Trump’s supporters upset, which was best reflected in the series of tweets made by Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator and a strong supporter of the Republican candidate. And yes, I am angry.
Tonight, Trump fully embraced the anger and Haley. “And yes, I am angry”, Trump said.
“The one that got me is when he said, ‘Ban all Muslims”, she said.
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Danik: Did you talk to her personally after Tuesday’s speech?
