Nikki Haley said Sunday she's only focused on one person in her quest to become the next president of the United States, and that's current President Joe Biden.
That includes former President Donald Trump, the only other major GOP candidate to announce his 2024 race, Haley, a former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina governor told "Fox News Sunday."
"I don't focus on President Trump, and it is amazing the media wants to focus on that," Haley said. "My announcement was to a few thousand people in South Carolina and I just had packed rooms in New Hampshire. Not one person asked about President Trump. They wanted to talk about President Biden. He is the president. I am focused on Biden."
Americans, she added, "need a new generation. We need new energy going in, need to leave the status quo of the past, and look ahead, and as much as people want to talk about other opponents, there will be more and many are my friends."
But Haley insisted that her focus is "on American families, how they are struggling, and how to get this country back."
Meanwhile, Haley, who was an ambassador during the Trump presidency, said that if she were the president, she would not be handling Chinese President Xi Jinping in the way Biden is handling him, including where the suspected spy balloon that traveled over several of the key military sites in the United States.
"There is nothing wrong with talking to China," she said. "The problem is it is what we say to them. China continues to say it is a weather balloon, we know that is not the case. It is unacceptable, it invaded our sovereignty and we have to say that, they are lying about the balloon, the same way they lied about COVID. It is time to stop being reactionary to China and be aggressive and let China know what we expect of them.
Haley also pushed back about a New York Times' article claiming that she is walking a fine line among conservatives as a female candidate.
"I think people spend too much time deciding how women should handle something or what they should do or glass ceilings," she said. "To put yourself out to run for president means you have a vision of where we should go in the country."
Americans are worried about "heavy issues" such as inflation, their children's education, Haley added, and "how somebody wins is not one of them."
There have also been critics who say Haley is not "MAGA enough" to win, but she said Sunday she's a conservative and does not care what "certain segments" think.
"We've lost seven out of eight popular votes for president," she said. "Republicans are doing something wrong. We have to focus on winning a majority of Americans. Our solutions are right. We lift up everybody, not just a select view. I will not pay attention to a certain segment of the population, I will fight with conservative solutions, and win as many as I can."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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