Nikki Haley says she shouldn’t be measured by how much she loves or hates Trump

(CNN) — Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley on Wednesday said she shouldn’t be judged on her personal feelings toward Donald Trump as she attempts to appeal to voters as the best alternative to the former president.

“Let me just say this, you know, anti-Trumpers, don’t think I hate Trump enough. Pro-Trumpers, don’t think I love Trump enough. What you see is what you get. I just call it like I see it and wouldn’t it be nice if you weren’t gauged on whether you love or hate somebody, and instead where you think the country should go?” Haley told CNN’s Dana Bash.

“The media loves to sit there and say, ‘But you’re not hating them enough’ or ‘You’re not loving him enough.’ Look, at the end of the day, I look at it policy by policy. I don’t look at the personal side. I don’t look at the political side. I look at what’s going to get the country back on track,” she added.

Haley sat down with CNN for a joint interview with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu a day after receiving his endorsement, a critical move that could strengthen the White House hopeful’s campaign as she attempts to take on Trump and the rest of the Republican primary field in the first-in-the-nation primary.

Trump maintains a significant lead over his rivals in both early state and national polls. Among likely voters in the Granite State’s GOP presidential primary, 42% say they would vote for him, followed by Haley at 20%, according to the latest CNN Poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire.

Haley emphasized that though she recognizes the strong support Trump has from voters, “chaos” continues to follow him.

“I think President Trump was the right president at the right time. I agree with a lot of his policies, but chaos follows him. Rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. We can’t afford four more years of chaos and survive it,” said Haley, who served as Trump’s United Nations ambassador for the first two years of his administration.

Sununu, who is spending the week campaigning with Haley following his endorsement, said it’s going to be a “40-day ground game” in New Hampshire ahead of the primary.

He said he chose Haley over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie because of the personal connections she makes with voters, a key facet of campaigning in the Granite State.

“It isn’t about just the policies. Policy can be easy,” he explained. “It’s about who’s really connecting with folks listening, earning the trust, right, spending the time. That’s how we do it here in New Hampshire.”

Asked whether DeSantis and Christie should drop out of the race, Sununu said “they’ll make that decision for themselves.”

“They’re good governors. They’re good candidates, right?  But here in New Hampshire, this is really coming down to Donald Trump and Nikki Haley,” he said, predicting the results the primary would help the country realize a Trump nomination “doesn’t have to be the case.”

Sununu, who made clear he would back a candidate in the GOP primary, said he thinks Haley meets that criteria.

“If you’re running against the former president, you’re making it pretty clear that you… not just you have the chops to be president, but you’re not going to support him,” he said.

The New Hampshire governor, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, contrasted Haley as a candidate with a forward-thinking and detail-oriented agenda compared to the former president, who continues to propagate falsehoods about the 2020 election.

“She really gets into details to talk about what she’s about. What she’s going to bring to the table in the future,” he said, “Not litigating the past, not whining about all the other stuff that we hear from the former president.”

Haley has faced criticism over how she addresses the former president by Christie, who is also hoping to emerge as the top Trump alternative in New Hampshire.

“She’s playing for [2028] and she doesn’t want any of the people who are supporting Trump right now to be angry with her,” he told voters at a town hall in Hooksett last week. “… If you’re worried about people being angry with you, you have no business in my opinion running for president.”

In the interview, Haley also responded to criticism from DeSantis in which he again called her the “establishment candidate.” In recent weeks, DeSantis has said Haley is the candidate that “more aligned with establishment interests,” which he ultimately thinks will negatively impact her standing with Republican voters.

During a CNN town hall on Tuesday night in Des Moines, DeSantis reiterated his attacks saying in part, “even a campaigner as good as Chris [Sununu] is not going to be able to paper over Nikki being an establishment candidate.”

The former South Carolina governor dismissed his comments, touting her record from her time in office and emphasizing “labels don’t matter.”

“You can say something, but it doesn’t make it true. I was a Tea Party candidate when I became governor. I was a strong conservative governor…And then you saw me go to the UN, I took the kick me sign off our backs and America was respected again. Everything I’ve ever done has been strong,” Haley said.

“He [DeSantis] can say establishment or whatever. I don’t think labels matter…and Chris’s endorsement has just really given us a big kick at a time that the momentum was building, and this is going to continue to take us where we need to go,” she added.

Haley also weighed in on foreign policy, specifically about the recent back-and-forth between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which they publicly clashed in dueling remarks over who will govern Gaza post Israel-Hamas war. While Biden holds firm that he believes the Palestinian Authority should take over Gaza, Netanyahu said he won’t allow it.

Haley criticized the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, condemning Hamas and again calling for its elimination.

“The Palestinian Authority has done a terrible job at leading…The people that live in Gaza have had to live under the oppression of Hamas, which is you know, a terrorist organization that has ruined that air. Israel doesn’t want Gaza. That’s not the issue, but Israel doesn’t want terrorists on their doorstep either,” the former UN ambassador said.

“We need to support Israel being comfortable with who’s going to be their neighbors. And you need to make sure that the people of Gaza, the best way to help the people of Gaza, is to eliminate Hamas,” she added.

Pushed further on who should lead Gaza, Haley said it’s not up to America to decide.

“I mean, we’re going to have to figure this out, right? But I don’t think America has to figure this out. I think Israel needs to decide what they want their neighbors to look like,” Haley said.

“Every country deserves to know that they can have a secure border and not have terrorists living on there. So, it’s going to take Israel a while to figure out how they’re going to get the Palestinians to find good leadership, but the Palestinian Authority has not been good to the people at all, and they haven’t proven worthy,” she added.

The two politicians also discussed their abortion stances. While Haley identifies personally as anti-abortion, Sununu said he is in favor of abortion rights. Still, the New Hampshire governor told CNN, “When it comes to the abortion issue, no one has answered the question as well as Nikki Haley.”

Sununu said Haley’s position on abortion is one of the “number one positives” he hears from voters, explaining, “She’s exactly where it needs to be. She’s pro-life, and that’s great. But at the end of the day, this is going to be a state’s issue.”

Haley has said she would sign a 15-week federal abortion ban, but she emphasized it’s unrealistic she would be able to get 60 votes for such a measure to pass in the Senate. Often describing herself as “unapologetically pro-life,” Haley has reiterated she believes Republicans and Democrats need to find a national consensus on the issue, such as banning later abortions and agreeing not to jail women who get them.

Haley told CNN that as someone who has dealt with fertility issues, her heart “absolutely breaks” for Kate Cox, a pregnant woman in Texas who sought an abortion after learning her fetus has a fatal condition and doctors told her she could risk her future fertility if she doesn’t get the procedure.

The Texas Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling on Monday that would have allowed Cox to obtain an abortion under the state’s “medical emergency” exception, though her attorneys hours earlier said she had left the state to have the procedure.

Haley said she thinks states with restrictive abortion laws, like Texas, should make their policies “more detailed” when it comes to exceptions like protecting the life of the mother in medical emergencies.

“They should look at when the situation between the doctor and the woman sees something that’s dangerous, that might prevent her from having more babies or might be damaging to her body or something, I think you’re gonna see the medical board make a decision on where is that line,” she said.

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