Nikki Haley reaffirms America was never a racist country

Indian American Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has reaffirmed her view that America was never a racist country saying that America was founded on the idea that all men are created equal.

“The intent was to do the right thing,” she said of the country’s founding during a CNN town hall in Henniker, New Hampshire, Thursday night.

“Now, did they have to go fix it along the way? Yes, but I don’t think the intent was ever that we were going to be a racist country.”

Haley was asked if she stood by her comment earlier this week that America has “never been a racist country,” given the country’s history of legal racism.

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Haley had made the comment in a Fox News interview when asked if she believes the Republican Party was racist, after an MSNBC host wondered whether Haley could win the Republican nomination as a woman of color.

On a personal level, she said during the CNN town hall that while she experienced racism growing up in rural South Carolina, her parents told her that those experiences wouldn’t define what she could achieve.

“We had plenty of racism that we had to deal with, but my parents never said we lived in a racist country, and I’m so thankful they didn’t,” Haley said.

“Because for every brown and Black child out there, if you tell them they live or were born in a racist country, you’re immediately telling them they don’t have a chance.”

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Haley pointed to her own achievements of becoming one of the first female minority governors in the country and later US ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump.

She echoed comments she’s made on the campaign trail that too many Americans have a “national self loathing,” even though the US is not “racist” but “blessed.”

“I think it’s important that we tell all kids that, ‘Look, America is not perfect. We have our stains, we know that,’” she said. “But our goal should always be to make today better than yesterday.”

Haley not only turned up the heat on Trump but also frequently tied him to President Joe Biden and trying to portray the pair as twin threats to progress and national unity.

“Do we really want to have two 80-year-olds running for president when we have a country in disarray and a world on fire?” she said, before making an equivalence between Trump’s legal troubles and the controversies around Biden.

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“They are so distracted by their own investigations and their own grievances,” Haley added. “We don’t need people that are distracted. We need people who love America, realize that if your time is gone, move out of the way and let a new generational leader come in.”

Haley touted surveys that show her outperforming other Republican candidates among the broader electorate in hypothetical face-off against Biden.

“I want to bring people into the party. Because at the end of the day, we have to heal and unify as Americans,” she said.

Haley also weighed in on Trump’s recent criticism of her, accusing him of throwing a “temper tantrum” and saying he feels “threatened” and “insecure” by the challenge she poses.

“Rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him,” she said. “We can’t continue down this path and go through four more years of chaos. We won’t survive it. You don’t fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos.”

Haley didn’t close the door to pardoning Trump if she were elected president. She asserted she would not preemptively pardon him, saying that she felt “everything needs to play out.”

Haley also strongly suggested she does not believe in the type of blanket immunity Trump has recently argued presidents should have.

“Do you get just total freedom to do whatever you want? No. That’s never the way it was intended to be. There needs to be accountability. No one is above the law,” she explained.

But she went on to say that under a scenario in which she was president and Trump was convicted of any of the felony charges he is currently facing, she would consider a pardon.

The former South Carolina governor explained: “This is no longer about whether he’s innocent or guilty. This is about the fact that ‘How do we bring the country back together?’ And I am determined to make sure all of this division and all of this chaos goes away, and I think a pardon for him would make all of that go away.”

Haley said she felt that would be “healing for the country.”

Trump faces 91 criminal charges across four indictments. He has denied any wrongdoing.