Nikki Haley skirts donor's plea for her to drop out: 'I don't listen to him'
Presidential candidate Nikki Haley joined 'America's Newsroom' to discuss the RNC backtracking on a presumptive nominee proposal, the upcoming South Carolina primary and a major donor's call for her to drop out of the race.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Friday that a "totally unhinged" former President Trump was forced to back off pressuring the RNC to name him the presumptive nominee because the push-back was so dramatic.
The RNC was set to consider a resolution this week that would have declared Trump to be the party's presumptive nominee for president, if approved. However, Trump said Thursday on Truth Social that he did not want the process to go that way and rather it be settled at the ballot box.
This came on the heels of RNC chair Ronna McDaniel saying Haley should drop out and the party should unite around Trump to defeat President Biden in November.
Haley said she told McDaniel how "disappointed" she was in that stance and accused Trump of throwing a tantrum in his victory speech after Tuesday night's New Hampshire primary. She also took exception to his threat to ban her donors from the Make America Great Again movement.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"Think about that," she said. "That's a president who's supposed to serve every person in America, and you're deciding that you're going to have a club, and actually ban people from being in and out of your club. And then he goes and encourages the members of the RNC and tries to push them into saying that he's the nominee in the race. I mean, they got so much push-back that he had to backtrack. He's totally unhinged."
After "America's Newsroom" host Dana Perino noted Trump had spoken out against such a resolution, Haley said it was "his people" that pushed it forward.
"I know how much he's pushed on Ronna," Haley said. "Ronna has made that very clear that he was pushing her to stop debates all this time, and so he pushes them to do things, and I think they got some major blowback, and that's why he had to walk it back. I mean, look, you can't bully your way through this process."
The resolution was first floated and then withdrawn by a former aide of Trump's campaign, RNC committee member David Bossie.
The once-crowded 2024 GOP field has whittled down to just Trump and Haley after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out on Sunday, but the former president is in clear command after scoring decisive wins in Iowa and New Hampshire. Haley is facing daunting polling in upcoming states, but she hasn't signaled she's going anywhere.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. (Getty Images)
Asked to respond to megadonor Andy Sabin also urging Haley this week to quit the race, saying he'd be the first to write her a check in 2028, Haley said she didn't listen to donors.
"We have a country to save, and I think we've got a lot of solutions, and we don't need to talk about how you push through an election," she said. "We need to talk about what you're going to do for the American people, because right now the country is in disarray."
"America's Newsroom" co-host Bill Hemmer pressed Haley on the numbers that showed Trump winning a vast majority of Republicans in New Hampshire, while Haley's strength was with moderates and independents that won't be voting in other GOP primary states.
"When do you start winning Republicans?" Hemmer asked.
"I will win Republicans," she said. "But guess who else I win? I win moderates and I win independents, which he does not. That is why he lost in 2018. That's why he lost in 2020. That's why he lost in 2022, and that's why in every poll you see he loses to Joe Biden and I win."
Haley has polled strongly against Biden in head-to-head hypotheticals, but Trump has finished ahead of Biden in surveys as well.
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Fox News' Timothy H.J. Nerozzi contributed to this report.
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