Former GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley admitted Wednesday that she doesn’t like Donald Trump’s personality and is still disturbed by the offensive remarks he made about her, her husband and his military service ― even though she endorsed his bid for president.
Haley, who dropped out of the GOP primary race in March, said on her recently debuted SiriusXM radio show that she’s had to put aside her personal grievances with her party’s nominee, who’s known for slinging insults at his opponents.
“You’re not going to hear me say glowing things about Donald Trump’s personality,” she said. “I have issues with him as well. I have not forgotten what he said about me. I have not forgotten what he said about my husband or his deployment time or his military service.”
In February, Trump questioned why Haley’s husband, Michael Haley, wasn’t appearing at campaign events with her.
“Where is he? He’s gone,” Trump joked.
Haley’s husband was serving a yearlong stint on a National Guard mission in Africa at the time.
Trump’s jab was especially odd considering his wife, Melania Trump, has been absent from the nearly the entirety of his campaign this election cycle.
“I haven’t forgotten about his or his campaign’s tactics, from, you know, putting a birdcage outside our hotel room to calling me ‘birdbrain,’” Haley said. “I haven’t forgotten any of that, but politics is not first for thin-skinned people.”
Trump’s personality isn’t what’s important, Haley continued.
“The best way to serve your country is to not get personal, but focus on where we are with the economy, focus where we are with the border, focus on national security, focus on freedom,” she said.
But Haley was highly critical of Trump’s policies on those issues while she was still running.
“President Trump has surrounded himself with the political elite, but they are the same political elite that have spent like drunken sailors, they’ve raided social security, and they continue to waste taxpayer dollars,” she said in February. “Everybody talks about the economy when Trump was President ― he put us $8 trillion in debt in just four years.”
