Nikki Haley Vows to Keep Fighting Against Trump—And for the Nation

Nikki Haley vowed to keep battling for her party’s 2024 presidential nomination even after losing her fifth consecutive Republican primary.

Former President Donald Trump was projected to win Michigan’s GOP race on Tuesday less than a hour after polls were closed. At the time that the race was called by the Associated Press, the former president was up by a 35-point margin.

But Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and ex-U.N. ambassador under Trump’s administration, is remaining on course, telling CNN’s Dana Bash prior to the Michigan primary being called that her campaign’s goal “is to be as competitive as possible.”

“We’ve only seen a handful of states vote,” Haley said when asked about her past primary losses. “I mean, look, I’ve said this before, as much as the media wants to jump ahead, we’re taking this one state, one day at a time.”

Haley’s losses to Trump have been in the double digits in every primary race involving the two, including in her home state of South Carolina over the weekend, where the former president won by more than 20 percentage points. In Nevada earlier this month, when Trump did not appear on the ballot, Haley still lost the race, falling behind the option for “None of These Candidates.”

But the former governor told Bash that she views Trump’s influence on the Republican Party like a “hole” in a sinking ship, noting that the GOP has straggled behind Democrats in many key swing states—including Michigan—since Trump was elected president in 2016.

“If 70 percent of Americans say they don’t want Donald Trump or Joe Biden, we are giving them an option,” Haley said on CNN. “What I’m saying to my Republican Party family, is we are in a ship with a hole in it. And we can either go down with the ship and watch the country go socialist left, or we can see that we need to take the life raft and move in a new direction.”

Haley also reiterated a common talking point in her campaign, telling Bash that she is fighting “for my kids and your kids.”

“There’s nothing normal about the chaos that Joe Biden and Donald Trump have given us,” she added. “And our kids deserve to know normal … That’s where I’m trying to go. And that’s what I’m saying to the Republican Party, and to the American public.”

When reached for comment after Michigan’s GOP primary race was called, Haley’s campaign team directed Newsweek to a statement by the former governor’s spokesperson, Olivia Perez-Cubas, who said, “So long as Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, Republicans will keep losing to the socialist left. Our children deserve better.”