Washington: Months after bowing out of the US presidential race, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said she would vote for presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
In her first speech on national security and foreign policy since leaving the presidential bid, Haley said even though Trump “has not been perfect” on policies important to her, she will choose him over President Joe Biden, who she said, “has been a catastrophe".
“I will be voting for Trump,” the Indian-American leader said in a speech at Hudson Institute, a Washington DC-based think-tank where she will hold a chair. "As a voter, I put my priorities on a President who is going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account; who would secure the border, no more excuses. A president who would support capitalism and freedom. A president who understands we need less debt, not more debt.”
“Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I have made that clear many, many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe.” Elaborating further, she called Biden's recent policy to stop supplying ammunition to Israel amidst the ongoing conflict “foolish”.
The former South Carolina governor, who had quit the presidential race more than two months ago, did not endorse Trump during her earlier campaigns, and called on Trump to “earn the votes of those in our party and beyond who did not support him”.
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Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who has also served as the US ambassador to the United Nations, is scheduled to arrive in Israel next week. As part of her visit, she will be touring the Southern Israel areas including Kibbutz Be’eri and Kfar Aza regions, which border Gaza and where Hamas killed 1200 people and also kidnapped over 200 people on October 7 last year.
Haley will be accompanied by Danny Danon, an Israel Member of Knesset (MK) who was the ambassador of Israel to the United Nations. She is against anti-Semitism and has maintained that the treatment of Israel by the UN institutions led to the October 7 attack.