Haley vows to stay in the race against Trump

Indian American Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has vowed to go the distance against Donald Trump, but would not say directly whether she would support the former President Trump if he’s the ultimate party nominee.

“I mean, keep in mind, I am running against him for a reason. I’m running against him because … I don’t think he’s the right person at the right time. I don’t think he should be president,” she told ABC News Sunday.

“The last thing on my mind is who I’m going to support. The only thing on my mind is how we’re going to win this,” Haley said when asked if she stood by her pledge made during the first 2024 GOP primary debate to support Trump if he became the party nominee.

Haley, who has since emerged as the last standing Republican challenger to Trump, went on to make the argument that she is the most electable candidate and the most likely to win in the general election.

“If Donald Trump is the nominee for the Republican Party, he will not win. Every poll shows that. He will not win, and we will have a president Kamala Harris,” she said.

“I’m not going to allow that to happen. I’m not stopping. I’m not going anywhere. We’re going to do this for the long haul. And we’re going to finish it,” she added.

Pressed whether that meant she would not back Trump if he’s the Republican nominee, Haley dodged again.

READ: Nikki Haley asks Biden to take a mental competency test (February 9, 2024)

“That means I’m going to run and I’m going to win, and y’all can talk about support later,” Haley responded.

“Right now, you can ask him if he’s going to support me when I’m the nominee.”

“Do you think he would?” the interviewer asked.

“Do you think he would?” Haley said with a laugh. “I highly doubt it.”

Meanwhile, despite big losses in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, and the steep odds facing her in South Carolina, her home state, Haley is showing no signs of relenting, according to the New York Times.

She is still raking in donations and building out her national footprint, as she pledges to move her party past, it noted.

“He said he’s going to spend more time in a courtroom than he is going to be on the campaign trail,” she was quoted as saying of Trump on Friday in San Antonio, referring to the hours he spent in New York last week facing criminal and civil cases.

“But let me tell you what we are going to be doing. We are going to be on the campaign trail.”

“Everything he touches, we lose,” Haley said, painting Trump as an agent of “chaos” for Congress, the country and Republicans’ down-ballot prospects in November.

READ: Nikki Haley calls herself ‘best hope of stopping Trump-Biden nightmare’ (January 16, 2024)

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and a US ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, is projecting confidence even as her path to victory looks stark, the Times noted.

In many South Carolina polls, she trails Trump by roughly 30 points — and the picture beyond next week’s contest does not look much brighter.

On the day after the South Carolina primary, regardless of the outcome, Haley has said she will head to Michigan, which holds its own contest Feb. 27.

From there, she has plans to crisscross the country before Super Tuesday, the largest single day of the primary season, and the last real chance she will have to prove she can change the course of the nomination. The expected stops include Colorado, Minnesota, Utah and Virginia.

READ: Nikki Haley calls Trump and Biden ‘equally bad’ for the nation (January 22, 2024)

Haley is betting her candidacy on courting independents and new Republicans in Michigan and in 11 Super Tuesday states where Republican primaries are not limited to voters affiliated with her own party, the Times suggested.

Consult tracking poll showed Haley trailing Trump by big margins in every Super Tuesday state.