Trump issues sharpest criticism yet of Haley as Iowa caucuses approach
MASON CITY, Iowa — Former President Donald Trump ramped up his attacks on former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley at campaign events in Iowa this weekend as his campaign sought to halt her ascent a little more than a week before the caucuses that launch the primary season.
In a new ad and in speeches Friday, Mr. Trump suggested that Ms. Haley would adopt policies that would lead to open borders and mocked her decision to run for president.
“She doesn’t have what it takes,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “I know her very well.”
Mr. Trump, the dominant Republican polling leader, has spent much of the primary season targeting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and he kept up that drumbeat Friday night. But the speeches in Mason City and Sioux Center marked a clear escalation of his attacks on Ms. Haley, whose poll numbers have surged in New Hampshire, where she notched the endorsement of the state’s Republican governor, Chris Sununu. Until recently, Mr. Trump had largely ignored Ms. Haley, beyond calling her “birdbrain.”
In Friday’s speeches, he went through a point-bypoint critique of Ms. Haley’s record on immigration, entitlement retooling and taxes while suggesting she is relying on liberals and Biden supporters to fund her campaign. Trump’s advisers have signaled that more attacks are coming as the Jan. 23 New Hampshire primary draws closer.
Mr. Trump’s sharpest critiques of Ms. Haley focused on the border, a theme his campaign outlined in a recent New Hampshire ad.
“Nikki opposed my border wall, she condemned my strong border policies and in 2016 she stabbed the Republican Party in the back,” he said Friday. Mr. Trump also described Ms. Haley as being “inthe pocket of the open borders establishment donors forher entire career now.”
Mr. Trump faulted Ms. Haley for raising objections to a policy that he originally framed as a “Muslim ban” during his 2016 campaign. The proposal ultimately became an executive order that he issued as president barring travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Ms. Haley did object to that initial framing during Mr. Trump’s early days in the White House in 2017.
The Trump campaign pointed to news articles from 2015 quoting Ms. Haley as saying that Mr. Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States was “un-American,” “unconstitutional” and defied “everything that this country was based on.” Her campaign has said she objected to bans on travelers to the United States on the basis of religion, noting that she later defended Trump’s revised travel ban when she became his ambassador to the UN.
“Haley was combating illegal immigration long before Donald Trump rode down that famous escalator,” said Nachama Soloveichik, Ms. Haley’s communications director. “If Trump feels so strongly about his false attacks, he should stop hiding and defend them on the debate stage in Des Moines.”
Mr. Trump’s ad suggested that Haley’s immigration policies would be lax and similar to those of the Biden administration, suggesting her leadership would put the United States in “grave danger.”