Former UN ambassador and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who had a strong performance at the first GOP presidential debate according to several polls and commentators, said she raised over $1 million in the first three days after the debate.
“I don’t care about polls,” Haley declared at the debate. “What I care about the fact is that no one is telling the American people the truth. The truth is that Biden didn’t do this to us. Our Republicans did this to us too. When they passed that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill, they left us with 90 million people on Medicaid, 42 million people on food stamps.”
“No one has told you how to fix it,” she continued. “I’ll tell you how to fix it. They need to stop the spending. They need to stop the borrowing. They need to eliminate the earmarks that Republicans brought back in, and they need to make sure they understand these are taxpayer dollars. It’s not their dollars.”
“I think in the first 72 hours we raised a million dollars,” Haley told to Fox News Digital. “We’ve had thousands of people volunteer. We’ve had a lot of people join the campaign. The phones are still ringing,” she added. “We’re grateful. We’re absolutely grateful. But it only keeps us more motivated because we have a country to save.”
“You never know what you’re going to get when you get on a debate stage,” she continued. “You never know what questions you’re going to be asked. You don’t know who’s going to attack or not attack. You don’t know. So it’s all instinct and gut. And it’s about communicating as much as you can, and that’s what we tried to do.”
Haley discussed climate change, the Russia-Ukraine War, and foreign aid during the debate.
“Is climate change real? Yes, it is. But if you go want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions,” she said.
Later during the debate, Haley got into an argument with tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy over Ukraine. Ramaswamy stated, “This is disastrous, that we are protecting against an invasion across somebody else’s border,” prompting Haley to respond, “When I was at the UN, the Russian ambassador suddenly died. This guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.” That line elicited applause from some in the audience.
After Ramaswamy responded by saying, “I wish you well on your future career on the boards of Lockheed and Raytheon,” Haley replied, “Do you want to go and give Ukraine to Russia?”
“You have no foreign policy experience and it shows,” she added.
She got more applause when she stated, “Israel needs America. America needs Israel: That you’re the front line of defense to Iran.”
Another popular line: “We need transparency in the classroom, because parents should never have to wonder what’s being said or taught to their children in the classroom.”
And one more: “Biological boys don’t belong in the locker rooms of any of our girls.”
Katon Dawson, a Haley campaign adviser and surrogate, said, “What the Fox debate did for us as a campaign was made it all real and start coming together, and I think they [voters] understand the fact that Nikki’s different. … You saw that difference on the debate.”
