Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump gestures as he holds a campaign rally at Coastal Carolina University ahead of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary in Conway, South Carolina, on Saturday.
Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump gestures as he holds a campaign rally at Coastal Carolina University ahead of the South Carolina Republican presidential primary in Conway, South Carolina, on Saturday.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley shot back at former President Donald Trump after he questioned why Haley’s husband, Michael, has not been seen on the campaign trail.
“Donald, if you have something to say, don’t say it behind my back,” Haley said at the beginning of a rally in her home state of South Carolina Saturday evening. “Get on a debate stage and say it to my face.”
Trump held a rally in South Carolina, earlier Saturday in front of thousands of people on the campus of Coastal Carolina University.
“Where’s her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone,” Trump said at the rally in Horry County, where the former president is highly popular.
Michael Haley is deployed for a year with the South Carolina Army National Guard in Africa.
“I am proud of Michael’s service,” Nikki Haley said. “Every military family knows it’s a sacrifice. I have long talked about the fact that we need to have mental competency tests for (politicians) over the age of 75. Donald Trump claims he would pass that — maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t. But if you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone to be president of the United States.”
This isn’t the first time Trump mocked someone’s military service.
In 2015, during Trump’s first campaign, he said the late Sen. John McCain was only a war hero because he was prisoner of war during the Vietnam War for more than five years. “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said at the time. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”
The latest attacks two weeks before the South Carolina Republican presidential primary have become personal as the GOP race narrowed to the two major candidates.
Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s wife, has largely stayed off of the campaign trail this cycle.
But more than Nikki Haley’s husband was in the fray Saturday.
Nalin Haley, the former ambassador’s son, was one of the speakers at Haley’s Lexington County stop of the campaign’s bus tour. During Nalin Haley’s brief remarks, he invoked U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, who was appointed to the Senate in 2012 by Haley, but endorsed Trump ahead of the New Hampshire primary.
“It feels like 2004 (and) 2010 when the establishment was up against her. We had a lot of people in New Hampshire and I saw Trump standing side-by-side next to Sen. Judas, excuse me, Sen. Scott,” Nalin Haley said in a line that received laughs from the crowd.
A Scott spokesman responded later Saturday by referring to the senator’s mother, who was often on the campaign trail with her son. “You’d never hear Ms. Frances or anyone from the Scott family talk like that,” Scott spokesman Nathan Brand said in a text message to The State.
After Nalin Haley’s introduction, Nikki Haley took the stage and thanked those who accompanied the campaign on the trail. She had a little reference to Nalin Haley.
“Nalin, I will deal with you later,” Nikki Haley said with a laugh. “Thank you for your intro.”
