Nikki Haley Speaks at South Carolina Campaign Rally Transcript

What a crowd. It’s great to be here at Coastal Carolina. Thank you for taking the time to come. I do want to start out as much as we love the pomp and the circumstance and everything. We have to acknowledge the fact that as a military spouse, we lost three of our heroes today. I will tell you the fact that we lost three and dozens were wounded after 160 attacks on our men and women in the military. It is absolutely shameful, but what we need to remember is those families need to be lifted up today. We need to lift up every one of those families who lost their loved ones, and every one of those families whose loved ones have been injured in these attacks. So please take a moment to just lift them up in prayer. Let’s just take a few seconds, please. Amen. So thank you for taking the time to be here. I will tell you it has been an interesting week. When we started, there were 14 people in the race, and I was at 2%. We’ve seen that game before. Right? Remember when I was Nikki who at 3%? And so, one by one we dismissed the fellas, right? One by one. And then we saw in New Hampshire it became a two-person race.

(01:49)
So in Iowa, we went from 2% to 20%. In New Hampshire, we were able to pull out 43%. Donald Trump had a total meltdown, a total meltdown. He literally threw a temper tantrum on stage like I had never seen. Look, we were excited by the momentum; he was not to the point that he threw out insults. That’s what he does. I’m okay with that. I’m used to that. So he threw out insults and he talks about revenge. That’s what his acceptance speech was. It was about revenge and he talked about himself and at no point did he talk about the American people. So from that time till the next day, we raised a million dollars off the fact that he talked about revenge.

(02:57)
Then, the next day he comes out and says, “Anyone that supports Nikki Haley is not going to be part of MAGA.” That’s problem number one because you can’t be the President of the United States and not serve everyone. So when he said that everybody that supported me wasn’t going to be part of MAGA, we did and had some fun with it. We did some T-shirts that said “barred permanently” and we sold 15,000 T-shirts, and raised another $1.6 million in that 24 hours.

(03:51)
Then, he took it a step further and he tried to push his friends at the RNC to go ahead and announce him as the only nominee left in the races.

Lies.

Now look, only two states have voted. You’ve got 48 states and more territories that haven’t voted.

Come on.

He’s won 32 delegates out of 1,215, and I’ve won 17 delegates. This is far from over. So he also, when he pushed that, got pushed back and he stepped away from it and we raised another $1.4 million off that.

(04:41)
The reality is that is who he is of his core; it just is. The chaos and the drama of it all is so exhausting. And then we go and we see, a few days ago, he goes on another rant about.me for a while and is sitting there saying, “She didn’t do anything to get the security to the Capitol on January 6th.”

(05:19)
Now, y’all know I was nowhere near the Capitol on January 6th. I’ve never had a job in Washington DC, so I wouldn’t have anything to do with security. He was clearly confused, right?

Oh, yes.

(05:33)
[inaudible 00:05:35].

So I happen to always say that I think we need to have mental competency tests for anybody over the age of 75. He took offense to that. I think it hurt his feeling. And so he said, “I can do a mental competency test and I’ll challenge her to a mental competency test and I’ll beat her.” Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, but if he’s willing to do that, don’t you think it’s high time he get on a debate stage and debate me?

(06:25)
Don’t you think it’s time he man up and explain why he rose our debt more than any other president: $8 trillion in four years? Don’t you think it’s time that he said why he proposed a 25 cent per gallon increase in gas on all of us when he was present? Don’t you think it’s time that he answered why he praised China’s President Xi a dozen times after China gave the world COVID?

[inaudible 00:06:59].

Don’t you think it’s time that we ask him why he praised Hezbollah after they did that horrific killings on October 7th? America deserves answers and Donald Trump won’t give them to you, so we’re going to keep asking him to get on a debate stage. I think that we need to continue to tell him that he’s got to talk to the American people because you can’t hide behind the camera. He can’t hide behind the teleprompter at his rallies. He really needs to come face to face, Man up, Donald. I know you can do it. Let’s get it done.

(07:37)
And then you go and you look at the situation, he completely surrounds himself with all these political elitists, every congressional member, senior member, all these elected officials, Congress members that go up there and they surround him: the same group that has done nothing for us on wasteful spending and getting rid of it; the same group that’s done nothing to secure our border at all; the same group that continues to keep our education down instead of lifting up our kids.

(08:24)
So why is he surrounding himself, once again, with the same people who have done nothing for Americans? It doesn’t make sense. And so we’ve got to start getting him. We need to go into a different direction. We don’t need to have the same DC stuff. We need to go with something new. Then we go and see and think about it. He’s got South Carolina elected officials all around.

(08:50)
And so the press asked me, “Well, what’d you think about the fact that your governor in South Carolina came and stood behind Donald Trump with all the other South Carolina elected officials?” And I said, “I’m sorry. Do you mean the one I defeated when I ran for governor? Do you mean the speaker of the house and those elected officials that I forced to have to show their votes on the record when they were trying to hide behind voice votes? Do you mean that same political group that I forced to pass ethics reform and made them show where their income comes from? The same group that I banned half a billion dollars worth of pet projects that they were upset about? That group. You can have them. I don’t want them.”

(09:53)
You’re going to sit there and have Lindsey Graham stand up next to you and we’re supposed to say, “Oh, that’s what we need to be doing?” And I’m just going to let the one on Tim Scott go. That’s up to y’all. I’m not going to say anything about it. We have to live with our decisions.

(10:17)
So look, let’s look at where we are. You just had these court cases and he had another one yesterday. I’ll be honest with you. I’m not paying attention to what he’s been charged with, whether he’s found guilty or innocent. I’ve lost track. I don’t pay attention to that. But what I do know is that we continue to see him in a courtroom and then come out and give a press conference. And when he comes out and gives a press conference, he continues to defend himself and says that he’s a victim. But do you know what the problem with that is? Every time he does that, he’s not talking about the debt that we’re dealing with.

He’s not talking about social security that Congress is robbing. He’s not talking about the fact that our kids can’t read. He’s not talking about the fact that we’ve got an unsecured border and it only takes 1 person for a 9/11 moment. He’s not talking about the wars that are happening around the world. He’s talking about court cases. And guess what? There are 91 charges. So the rest of this year, that’s what we’re going to be hearing about. And you know who’s watching that? Russian, China, Iran. That’s who’s watching it. That’s why it’s dangerous. But we also want to look at the fact that everybody talks about what a good economy we had under Donald Trump and we did. But at what cost? $8 trillion in just 4 years. Our kids are never going to forgive them for that. And you have $34 trillion in debt. We’re having to borrow money just to make our interest payments. China owns some of that debt. And I would love to tell you that Biden did that to us, and Biden has sent us down this socialism roller coaster that’s dangerous that we have to stop.

(12:14)
But as your governor and as ambassador, I have always spoken hard truths and I’m going to do that with you today. Our Republicans did that to us too. You go back and look at that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill that they passed with no accountability, that expanded welfare, has now left us with 80 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps. That’s a third of our country. And do you think that anybody’s done anything about that? Republicans had the chance to make it right. No worries. Republicans, did they try and make it right? No. They doubled down and opened up pet projects and earmarks for the first time in 10 years, pushing through 7,000 of them a year ago. Want to know how they spent your money? $30 million on an honors college in Vermont. 10 million to tear down a hotel in Alaska. 7.5 million on a courthouse in Colorado. And the list goes on.

(13:19)
In the 2024 appropriations budget, Republicans put in $7.4 billion worth of pet projects and earmarks. Democrats put in 2.8 billion. Now you tell me who the big spenders are. All while 1 in 6 American families can’t pay their utility bill, 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, 50% of American families can’t afford diapers, homelessness is up 12%. 650,000 Americans are homeless. Something’s got to give. And do you know Congress has one job, one job, and that’s to make sure they give us a budget on time. Do you know Congress has only given us a budget on time 4 times in 40 years? 4 times in 40 years. You know what we’ll do about that? You don’t give us a budget on time, you don’t get paid. Period. Don’t you think it’s finally time we had term limits in Washington, DC? Don’t you think we need to have mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75? Now, let me say this. I’m not being disrespectful when I say that. We all know 75-year olds that can run circles around us. And then we know Joe Biden. Congress has become the most privileged nursing home in the country. These are people who are making decisions on the future of our economy. These are people making decisions on our national security. We need to know they’re at the top of their game. So what do we think we should do about the economy? The first thing is, don’t you think it’s time we finally put an accountant in the White House.

(15:39)
We’ll start by clawing back to over $100 billion of unspent COVID dollars that are still sitting out there. Instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after Middle America, we’ll go after the hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID fraud, 1 out of every $7 was spent fraudulently. If 8% of our budget is interest, quit borrowing. Cut up to credit cards. You have to balance a budget every day. I had to balance a budget as governor. Why is Congress the only group that refuses to balance the budget? We’ll stop the spending. We’ll stop the borrowing. We’ll eliminate their pet projects and earmarks and I will veto any spending bill that doesn’t take us back to pre-COVID levels. That will save us trillions.

(16:30)
And then we’ll reduce the size of the federal government. It is too big. We will take as many federal programs as we can and we’ll send them down to the states. That way we’re reducing the size, but we’re empowering people here on the ground. Think education, think healthcare, think welfare, think mental health. If all of those came down with no strings attached and every state could decide for themselves what they needed, that’s when you start to move the ball. These are common sense changes. I’m going to clean house. Sing it. Right now, over 75% of federal employees are still working from home 3 years after COVID. And at the same time that’s happening, over 70% of most of our agencies are sitting empty. We’re paying for that. We’ve got to start cleaning house and getting things done.

(17:37)
The next thing we want to do is we’ve seen the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We’ve got to open up the middle class and we’re going to start by eliminating the federal gas and diesel tax in this country. We’re going to cut taxes on the middle class and simplify the brackets. And we’re going to make the tax cuts on small businesses permanent. They made them temporary. We’re going to make them permanent. They took care of the corporations. But small businesses are the heartbeat of our economy. We need to start acting like it.

(18:16)
And then you look at education. Right now in America, only 31% of 8th graders are proficient in reading. Think about that. Only 27% of 8th graders in our country are proficient in math. If we don’t do something and do something quick, we’re going to be in a world of hurt 10 years from now. In South Carolina, we knew if a child couldn’t read by 3rd grade, they were 4 times less likely to graduate high school. So we together, instead of pushing them forward, we started holding them back. We brought in their parents, we did reading remediation, and we set them up for success. We’ve got to do that across this country. We have got to get our kids reading again. And no parent should ever wonder what’s being said or taught to their child in the classroom. We need complete transparency in the classroom. As parents, we have one job, one job, and that’s to make sure that we do right by our kids. And that’s why every parent should be able to decide which school their child goes to or what mode of education they get. Parents know best what their kids need. And then let’s start building things in America again. Let’s put vocational classes back in our high school. Let’s get our kids working and invested even before they get out of school.

(19:50)
And then a point of personal privilege. We love our boys, but this goes to all you girl dads out there and all you strong moms. We have to raise strong girls. Strong girls become strong women. Strong women become strong leaders. And none of that happens if we have biological boys playing in girls sports. We’ve got to cut that out.

(20:28)
And then when it comes to the border, it doesn’t even look like the United States of America anymore. I can’t believe we’re allowing this to happen. And I’ve been to the border and I didn’t pull a Kamala and go and come back. I went 400 miles down that border. You’re not ready for what I saw. Mounds of clothes, mounds of shoes, paraphernalia, rape areas that the women and girls have to walk through. When you get up in the morning, you get your coffee and you watch the news. Bless you. When these ranchers get up in the morning, they get their coffee and they go see if anybody died crossing the fence. They pick up whatever little kids were left behind and turn them over to border patrol. I met with multiple sheriffs. They said before 7:00 AM they round up whatever illegal immigrants they can find, turn them over to border patrol, border patrol documents them and releases them until their court date years from now.

(21:27)
And when I asked border patrol about their job, they said, “you want to know what we do? We’re glorified babysitters. They don’t let us do our job.” 8.5 million illegal immigrants have crossed that border. We had enough fentanyl cross the border last year that would kill every single American. Number one cause of death for adults 18 to 45, fentanyl. And don’t think for a second, China doesn’t know what they’re doing when they send it over. It is time, no more

… more excuses that we get our border straight. Now, when I was governor, we passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country. President Obama sued us over it and we won. We need to take what we did in South Carolina and go national with it. We will do a national E-Verify program and require every business prove that the people they hire are in this country legally. We will defund sanctuary cities once and for all. No more safe havens in America. We’ll put 25,000 border patrol and ICE agents on the ground and let them do their job. And we will go back to the Remain in Mexico policy so that no one even steps foot on US soil. And instead of catch and release, we’ll go to catch and deport. That is how we will finally secure the border.

(23:00)
And when I grew up in Bamberg, South Carolina, my parents always taught us that you take care of those who take care of you.

Come on!

But I’m going to ask you for taking care of those who take care of us. Right now in America, over 35,000 of our veterans are homeless. One in three suffers from PTSD or thoughts of suicide. We lose 22 heroes a day to suicide. If a veteran needs a doctor’s appointment at the VA, on average takes 29 days. Why 29 days? Because on the 30th day, they get to go to the doctor or hospital of their choice. So midway through the 29 days, they get a call to reschedule and the clock starts all over again. It’s shameful how we treat our veterans. Now, I’m the proud wife of a combat veteran. He served in Afghanistan and the day he came home to us, that was a lot of prayers answered, but that was the easy part. When we got home, life got hard. Michael couldn’t hear loud noises. He couldn’t be in crowds. Life had passed him by for the year that he was gone. And the transition was tough. We can’t just love our men and women when they’re gone. We got to love them when they come back home, too. You can’t just transition them for two weeks and send them on their way. We’ve got to take care of them for the long haul.

(24:51)
That’s why I want to make sure we do telehealth so they get the mental health care they need right when they need it. They should be able to go to the doctor or hospital of their choice. They’ve earned that right. And I think the best way we deal with the VA, I think every member of Congress should have to get their health care from the VA and you watch how fast that gets fixed. It’ll be the best health care you’ve ever seen guaranteed. We will take care of our veterans.

(25:26)
And, you know, there were two things when I was at the United Nations that Russia, China, and Iran never wanted us to have. They never wanted us to have a strong military and they never wanted us to be energy independent. We won’t be energy independent. We’ll be energy dominant. We will get the EPA out of the way once and for all. Right now, the EPA cares more about sagebrush lizards than they do about whether we can afford our utility bill. We will speed up the permitting. We will open up our pipelines, including the Keystone pipeline. We will say no to Joe Biden stopping exporting liquified gas, and we will make sure we export as much liquified natural gas as possible. We will do nuclear power. We will do all of the above.

(26:18)
The goal is we don’t want to go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia. No more getting dirty oil from Iran and Venezuela. Let’s turn our energy sector, not in just enough to take care of America. Let’s turn it into the economic powerhouse we know it can be to pay down our debt and to reduce inflation. We can get that done.

Come on [inaudible 00:26:39].

Now let’s talk about national security. The world is on fire literally. You’ve got a war in Europe. You’ve got a war in the Middle East. You’ve got North Korea testing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US. You’ve got China on the march. But make no mistake, none of that would’ve happened had we not had that debacle in Afghanistan.

Tell us.

The idea that Michael and his military brothers and sisters who served there had to watch us leave Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night without telling our allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decades because we asked them to be there. Think about what that said to our friends. More importantly, think about what that said to our enemies. We need to start telling our enemies what we expect of them and stop being reactionary. You look at these 160 strikes that have happened on our men and women overseas. Why did that happen? You won’t hear Biden talk about what he did because when I was at the UN, we passed the largest set of sanctions. We decimated the Iran deal. We pulled out of it. We made sure that we emptied their coffers. They had no cash. There would be no Hamas without Iran. There’d be no Hezbollah without Iran. There wouldn’t be the Houthis without Iran. There wouldn’t be these proxies in Iraq and Syria or the ones that hit those military men and women in Jordan without Iran.

(28:11)
And what did Biden do? He lifted the sanctions and allowed China to start exporting as much oil as possible and filled their coffers to do all of this, to do what they did in Israel, to do what they’re doing in Iraq and Syria, to do what they’re doing from Hezbollah and Lebanon, all of that because Joe Biden did that. And then he just continued to be weak. When have we ever let men and women sit there and take strikes like that and do nothing to stop it?

(28:43)
He’s done nothing. He’s got to put the sanctions back on. He’s got to stop trying to get back into an Iran deal that doesn’t help us, and he’s got to start making sure that we show American strength. That’s the only way we will get that done.

No new war! [inaudible 00:28:58].

None of us want new wars. None of us want new wars.

[inaudible 00:29:04].

Don’t be offended by that because my husband and every military member sacrifices every day for his right to do that. So let’s talk about our biggest national security threat, China. China’s been planning war with the United States for years, and that’s not an exaggeration. They’re already here. They’ve already infiltrated our country. They’ve bought 400,000 acres of US soil most recently near Grand Forks Air Force Base where our most sensitive drone technology is. They’ve put millions of dollars into our university, stealing our research, spreading Chinese propaganda. Everybody got upset with the Chinese spy balloon, right? China said it was a weather balloon and Biden believed it.

(30:39)
Look, we have beautiful beaches, but that is not why China sent that spy balloon. It’s because we are a strong military state, and now we know it connected with a US internet company and took all that surveillance and sent it over to China. But what about the fact that 90% of our law enforcement drones are Chinese? Think about the mini surveillance that’s happening. There’s technologies that China wants because it builds up their military and it threatens America. And the Biden administration approved 70% of those requests last year. The Trump administration approved even more than that.

(31:16)
And then you look at the fact we’ve had more Americans die of fentanyl than the Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam Wars combined. 75,000 Americans last year alone. There are Chinese police stations throughout our country. There’s a Chinese spy base that’s going off our shores in Cuba, and China’s now building up their military at a scary pace. They have 500 nuclear warheads. That’s a hundred more than they had last year. They have the largest naval fleet in the world. They have 370 ships. They’ll have 400 ships in two years. We won’t even have 350 ships in two decades. They’re doing artificial intelligence, they’re doing space, they’re doing cyber. They’ve developed hypersonic missiles. We’ve barely gotten started. And now China’s the lead developer on neuro-strike weapons, weapons engineered to change the brain activity of military commanders and segments of the population. That’s who we’re dealing with. So when Biden tells you that China’s a competitor, I’ve dealt with China every single day at the United Nations. They never saw us as a competitor. They always saw us as an enemy. We’ve got to start looking at them the way they look at us.

Come on, girl!

So how do we deal with China? The first thing we do is stop selling any US soil and take back the land they’ve already purchased. We go to our universities and we say, “You either take foreign money or you take American money, but the days

… of taking both are over. We get that Chinese infiltration out of our schools. We blacklist all technologies that build up their military, and we tell them we’re going to end all normal trade relations with them until they stop murdering Americans with fentanyl. You watch how fast they move because they need our economy. And then we will build up a strong military. Strong militaries don’t start wars, strong militaries prevent wars.

Come on.

And that doesn’t mean… You all don’t let it bother you. That’s what Trump does. He does disruption. That’s the only way he thinks he can win, is by planting people like this. I think we’re getting under his skin, just saying, I don’t know. When I talk about building up a strong military, that doesn’t mean throwing more money at the Department of Defense. It means cleaning it up, getting rid of the red tape, getting rid of the bureaucracy, stop playing favorites with defense contractors. And more than that, making sure that we focus on what really matters. They are focused on so many more programs that they have no business being involved in. For goodness’ sake, they have got to stop these gender pronoun classes. It’s demoralizing our military.

(34:49)
And our focus should be on to modernize the military. We have too many generals focused on wars of the past. They’re thinking land, air, and sea. What we need to be focused on is artificial intelligence, cyber, space, hypersonic missiles, submarines. That is what we need to be focused on. We will get that back on track. And once our enemies know that we’re strong, what the gentleman didn’t realize there is the last thing you want as a military spouse is for your loved one to go to war.

(35:19)
Our goal is to prevent war. It has always been about preventing war. So we know what we need to do domestically, and we know what we need to do from a national security perspective. But in order to do that, we’ve got to acknowledge some hard truths. Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. That is nothing to be proud of. We should want to win the majority of Americans. And the only way we’ll win a majority of Americans is if we elect a new generational conservative leader. We need to leave the negativity and the baggage behind and focus on the solutions of the future. Another hard truth, I voted for Donald Trump twice. I was proud to serve America and his administration.

(36:23)
The problem is chaos follows him. You know I’m right. Chaos follows him, and we can’t be a country in disarray, and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We will not survive it. And you know what should send a chill up every person’s spine? The thought of a president, Kamala Harris. If you look at every general election poll head-to-head, it’s going to be another nail-biter of an election. Trump and Biden are like this. On a good day, he might be up by two. That’s margin of error. You look at those same general election polls, I defeat Biden by up to 17 points.

(37:22)
That’s bigger than the presidency. That’s House, that’s Senate, that’s governorships all the way down the school board. But think about that. You win with a double-digit win in DC. That’s a mandate to stop the wasteful spending and get our economy back on track. That’s a mandate to get our kids reading again and go back to the basics in education. That’s a mandate to secure our borders with no more excuses. That’s a mandate to bring law and order back to our country, and that’s a mandate for a strong America we can all be proud of. Don’t you want that?

Yeah.

Six months ago, I dropped my husband Michael off at 4:00 AM for another year-long deployment, and I watched him and 230 soldiers pick up their two duffel bags of belongings to go to a country they’ve never been all in the name of protecting America. They’re willing to sacrifice their lives and their families because they still believe in this amazing experiment that is America. So if they’re willing to sacrifice for us there, shouldn’t we be willing to fight for America here?

Yes.

Because we have a country to save, but if we’re going to save her, it’s going to take a lot of courage. Courage from every single person here. Courage for me to run and courage for every one of you to know, don’t complain about what happens in a general election if you don’t go and vote in this primary, it matters. Think for a second about what we did together in South Carolina. We came in with an 11% unemployment. We had thousands of people on welfare, and South Carolina was the butt of the jokes. And by the time we left, we were building planes with Boeing. We were building more BMWs than any place in the world. We brought in Mercedes-Benz, we brought in Volvo, five international tire companies. They were referring to us as the beast of the southeast, which I still love.

(40:01)
We’ve dropped that 11% unemployment down to 4%. We moved 35,000 people from welfare to work. We said, if you’ve got to show picture ID to buy Sudafed, you’ve got to show picture ID to get on a plane. You should have to show picture ID to protect the integrity of the election process. We passed voter ID in South Carolina. We passed tort reform, we passed pension reform, we cut taxes. But more than that, by the time I left, South Carolina was named the friendliest state in the country, the most patriotic state in the country. And don’t blame me for this one. The number two state in the country that people were moving to. So if we could have those wins in South Carolina, do you know what we could do in America? Do you know how we could become so patriotic and so much of a powerhouse that we go and show the entire world that not only is America back, but America is strong?

(41:18)
When I announced, they asked me why I was running. And I said, my parents came here 50 years ago to an America that was strong, and proud, and full of opportunities. I want them to know that country again. I’m doing this for my husband, Michael, and his military brothers and sisters. They need to know their sacrifice matters. They need to know that we love our country. I’m doing this for my daughter, who just got married, and I saw how hard it was for her and her husband to buy a home. The average home buyer in America now is 49 years old. The American dream is leaving them. And I’m doing this for my son, who’s a senior in college, and I am tired of watching him write papers of things he doesn’t believe in just to get an A. That’s not us, that’s not America.

(42:05)
And for the first time, 81% of Americans don’t think they’re kids that are going to live as good of a life as we did. We can’t be okay with that. I’m not okay with that. We do have a country to save, but I’ll promise you this, if you’ll leave here and pick up a yard sign on your way out. If you’ll go tell 10 people that it’s important that they either go early vote, February 12th, or they go vote in the primary, February 24th, and take 10 friends with you. I promise you what I promised you when I became governor. I will spend every minute I’m in office focused on making you proud. Let’s do this. Let’s do it together. Thank you so much. God bless.