Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley fired back at MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Tuesday after Reid claimed that Haley underperformed in Iowa because the Republican Party is racist.
Reid made her remarks after Haley, who had been labeled as the “surging” candidate ahead of Iowa, finished third in the state, which came despite her political operation spending more money there than any other candidate.
“It’s the elephant in the room,” said Reid. “She’s still a brown lady that’s got to try to win in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant, and which accepts the notion you can say immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. She’s getting birthered by Donald Trump, and I don’t care how much the donor class likes her — which will ramp up a lot the better she does in New Hampshire — it’s still a challenge.”
Haley responded during a Fox News segment on Tuesday morning, saying that Reid “lives in a different America than I do.”
“I mean, yes, I’m a brown girl that grew up in a small rural town in South Carolina who became the first female minority governor in history, who became a U.N. ambassador, and who is now running for president. If that’s not the American dream, I don’t know what is,” she said. “You can sit there and give me all the reasons why you think I can’t do this. I will continue to defy everybody on why we can do this, and we will get it done.”
When a Fox News host asked Haley if the Republican Party was racist, Haley responded: “No, we’re not.”
“We’re not a racist country,” she said. “We’ve never been a racist country. Our goal is to make sure that today is better than yesterday. Are we perfect? No, but our goal is to always make sure we try and be more perfect every day that we can.”
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“I know I faced racism when I was growing up, but I can tell you today is a lot better than it was then,” she added. “Our goal is to lift up everybody, not go and divide people on race or gender or party or anything else. We’ve had enough of that in America. That’s why I’m so passionate about doing this. I don’t want my kids growing up where they’re sitting there thinking that they’re disadvantaged because of a color or gender. I want them to know that if they work hard, they can do and be anything they want to be in America.”
WATCH:
“We’ve never been a racist country.”
— Nikki Haley rejects Joy Reid’s claim that Haley placed third in the Iowa caucuses because she is “a brown lady … in a party that is deeply anti-immigrant,” and rejects any claim that the GOP is a racist party pic.twitter.com/a3yRqK82em
— The Recount (@therecount) January 16, 2024
