Nikki Haley says she will vote for Trump in November despite their primary disputes

Nikki Haley said Wednesday that she will vote for Donald Trump in the November general election, a notable show of support given their intense and often personal rivalry during the Republican primary campaign.

But Haley also made clear that she feels Trump has work to do to win over voters who supported her over the course of the primary campaign and continue to vote for her in the ongoing primary election.

“I’m voting for Trump,” Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the UN, said during an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington.

“That being said, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech,” Haley added. “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 will just be with him. And I really hope he does.”

The comments in his first public speech since dropping out of the race are another sign of the virtually complete consolidation of GOP support for Trump, even from those who have called him a threat in the past.

Haley closed her own bid for the Republican nomination two months ago but did not immediately endorse Trump, accusing him of causing chaos and ignoring the importance of U.S. alliances abroad, and questioning whether Trump, 77, , he was too old to be president again.

Trump, in turn, repeatedly mocked her with the nickname “Birdbrain,” though he scaled back those attacks after winning enough delegates in March to become the presumptive Republican nominee.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Haley’s announcement.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s campaign has been working to win over supporters, whom they consider true swing voters. Biden’s team is quietly organizing a Republicans for Biden group, which will eventually include dedicated staff and focus on Haley’s hundreds of thousands of voters in each battleground state, according to people familiar with the plans but not authorized to discuss them publicly.

But Haley made several criticisms of Biden’s foreign policy and handling of the U.S.-Mexico border in her speech Wednesday at the Hudson Institute, a conservative Washington think tank she recently joined as she reemerges in the political arena. .

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