Nikki Haley’s campaign is reeling from the backlash it received for not saying that slavery led to the US Civil War. Haley was addressing an electoral event in New Hampshire when a voter asked what caused the US Civil War in the 1860s to which she answered without mentioning slavery.
“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how the government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” Nikki Haley said. According to a report by the BBC, the person who asked the question quickly responded to her reply by saying that it is ‘astonishing’ that Haley did not mention slavery.
Haley tried to clarify her comments on Thursday (local time) while speaking to news agency CNN where she said “of course the Civil War was about slavery”.
“We know that. That’s the easy part of it. What I was saying was what does it mean to us today? What it means to us today is about freedom. That’s what that was all about,” Haley further added.
Later on, at a radio show, Nikki Haley said the person who asked the question was a ‘democrat plant’.
The Wednesday event in Berlin, New Hampshire was meant to strengthen Haley’s chances in the Granite State where she reached 30% in one poll from earlier this month and only trailed Trump by 4 percentage points in another, according to a report by The Hill.
The report also pointed out that Haley’s remarks drew backlash from Republicans as well as Democrats. President Joe Biden shared a clip of the exchange on X, formerly known as Twitter, captioning his post by saying: “It was about slavery”.
Black American leader and Republican House of Representatives member from Florida Byron Donalds said on X: “1. Psst Nikki… the answer is slavery PERIOD, 2. This really doesn’t matter because Trump is going to be the nominee. Trump 2024!”
Her rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, said the former South Carolina governor and American envoy to the UN, is not ready for primetime yet. DeSantis said her response to the question was an ‘incomprehensible word salad’.
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