Days after Donald Trump mentioned Nikki Haley’s military husband during a campaign rally, the former president is now calling for him to leave his yearlong deployment early to “save her dying campaign.”
Trump and Haley, the final two GOP presidential candidates vying for the party’s nomination, are trading barbs as Haley’s aspirations hang in the balance ahead of the primary results in her home state of South Carolina on February 24. Haley served as the state’s governor before becoming the United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration.
In June 2023, Major Michael Haley was deployed with the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade, which is providing support in the Horn of Africa, as a staff officer with the South Carolina Army National Guard.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
“Tricky Nikki is CRASHING in the Polls,” Trump posted on Truth Social after midnight on Tuesday. “She is 15 points down to Crooked Joe Biden, and I’m crushing him in all Polls. She’s got no reason to make it to the South Carolina Primary.”
He went on: “The other day, she had almost no people attend her ‘rally’ (We had thousands and thousands who couldn’t even get into the large arena), an embarrassment to her wonderful husband, in Africa. I think he should come back home to help save her dying campaign.”
Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Haley campaigns via email for comment.
On Saturday, while speaking to a crowd of supporters at a “Get Out the Vote” rally in Conway, South Carolina, Trump first brought up Michael Haley.
“Where’s her husband? Oh, he’s away,” Trump said. “He’s away! What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.”
Nikki Haley then fired back at Trump in a social media post.
“Michael is deployed serving our country, something you know nothing about,” she wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “Someone who continually disrespects the sacrifices of military families has no business being commander in chief.”
She also tied Trump’s comments to his critical remarks about military service members over the years, including former GOP presidential candidate and war veteran John McCain.
Comments such as Trump’s negatively affect military recruiting, she added. Both the Army and the Air Force missed their respective goals by nearly 10,000 recruits in 2023, while the Navy fell short by 6,000.
“[Service members are] willing to go and sacrifice their lives and their families because they still believe America is worth fighting for,” Haley told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday. “And when anybody mocks it or makes fun of it, it does make them all question, like: What’s happening to America? And that’s a very sad state of affairs.
“If you want to see why recruitment is down in the military…it’s because of comments like that,” she added. “It’s because of how America has treated our veterans.”
Haley’s campaign could hinge on what happens in South Carolina, where Trump has been endorsed by Republican Senator Tim Scott, a former presidential candidate.
She faces an uphill battle, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Monday that shows Trump is favored by 65 percent of South Carolinians likely to vote in the state’s primary. Haley received 30 percent of their support in the survey.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.