Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, officially announced her candidacy for president on Tuesday, becoming the first major challenger to former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
Haley in the video announcement called for new leadership in her party and acknowledged that it had repeatedly failed to capture the popular vote in recent presidential elections.
"Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections," Haley said. "That has to change. Joe Biden's record is abysmal, but that shouldn't come as a surprise. The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again. It's time for a new generation of leadership."
Haley's announcement has been expected for months even after she said nearly two years ago that she would not challenge Trump for the 2024 election if he decided to run. But that didn't deter her from laying the groundwork for a campaign and ultimately plunging into the race weeks after Trump's announcement.
Haley is best known on the national stage for pursuing Trump's foreign policy agenda while serving as a UN ambassador for two years. But during her campaign announcement, she vowed to take on adversaries both foreign and domestic.
"Some people look at America and see vulnerability," Haley said. "The socialist left sees an opportunity to rewrite history. China and Russia are on the march. They all think we can be bullied, kicked around. You should know this about me: I don't put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you're wearing heels."
She is the first candidate in a long line of Republicans who are expected to launch 2024 campaigns in the next few months. Among them are Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
If elected, Haley would be the nation's first female president and the first president of Indian descent.
Her campaign announcement has already received criticism from other Republicans, including those who worked closely with her.
Former Trump adviser Steve Cortes went after Haley for providing her campaign video exclusively to the news outlet Axios.
"What 'conservative' would give the exclusive on their campaign launch to…Axios??? Haley the 'political weather vane' shows her true colors. She's trying to impress the corporations and oligarchs. Former Boeing board member can't change her stripes," Cortes said on Twitter.
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Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton suggested on Meet the Press NOW that Haley is "really running for vice president" ahead of her anticipated 2024 campaign announcement.
"I think Nikki is really running for Vice President," Bolton said. "That's my sense. I think she has a problem because she first said she wouldn't run if President Trump ran and her justification for changing was that a lot of things have changed, which I don't think is very convincing. I think people know where I stand on Trump."
Other Trump-aligned figures, like Fox News' Tucker Carlson, have also weighed in on her record on immigration, race and crime.
Carlson earlier this month said on his show: "It wasn't that long ago that Nikki Haley explained immigrants are more patriotic than you are. She also endorsed the BLM riots. She said George Floyd's death needs to be painful for everyone."
He even invited Haley's former aide, Justin Evans, who predicted that Haley would drop out before the first caucus is held.
"She just walks away when times get tough. She's never finished a job," Evans said, referencing Haley's exits as governor and UN ambassador.
Another Republican Stuart Stevens, a former political consultant, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times, claiming that Haley threw away all the "unlimited potential" she had as the first woman governor of South Carolina, the first Indian American ever elected to statewide office there and the youngest governor in the country.
"I look at Ms. Haley now, as she prepares to launch her own presidential campaign, with sadness tinged with regret for what could have been," Stevens wrote. "But I'm not a bit surprised. Her rise and fall only highlights what many of us already knew: Mr. Trump didn't change the Republican Party; he revealed it. Ms. Haley, for all her talents, embodies the moral failure of the party in its drive to win at any cost, a drive so ruthless and insistent that it has transformed the G.O.P. into an autocratic movement. It's not that she has changed positions to suit the political moment or even that she has abandoned beliefs she once claimed to be deeply held. It's that the 2023 version of Ms. Haley is actively working against the core values that the 2016 Ms. Haley would have held to be the very foundation of her public life."
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