Washington DC: Republican leader and former party presidential contender Nikki Haley on Wednesday said that she will vote for Donald Trump in the November US Presidential elections. There has been a huge speculation on who will receive the votes of Haley’s supporters in this election which is a rematch between Trump and Biden.
Haley dropped her bid for the Party’s presidential nomination in March, but her name remained on the ballot and she still won well over 10 per cent of the vote in state-run primary contests despite no longer campaigning. Many of these votes are cast by Republicans and independents dissatisfied with Trump and also some Democrats have shown their support to Haley.
Haley served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations for two years when Trump was the US President. She never challenged the former president to win the party nomination and won only one state District of Columbia before ending her campaign. But her fierce attacks on the former President during the final days of her campaigning made Haley the standard bearer for the dwindling anti-Trump wing of the Republican party.
“Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear many, many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump,” Haley told an audience during a question-and-answer session on Wednesday at the Washington-based Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank.
The comments followed a speech on foreign policy, and the event marked Haley’s first public appearance since dropping out. When she formally ended her campaign she did not endorse Trump and still hasn’t formally done yet. In past as well she called on Trump to reach out to her supporters and earn their votes, comments which she again repeated on Wednesday.
“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him,” Haley said. Trump’s campaign has dismissed these calls saying that Haley’s supporters tend to vote Democrats, even as many are registered Republicans.
