Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary for former President Donald Trump's presidential campaign, said Sunday on Newsmax that "it would be best" if former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley would drop out and back Trump, "as the Republican Party is doing," so the fight can turn to defeating President Joe Biden this November.
Leavitt's comments came on Newsmax's "Sunday Report" before Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race Sunday and announced his endorsement for Trump, saying that although they have had their differences, "He has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear — a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism — that Nikki Haley represents."
Leavitt, meanwhile, rejected several comments made by Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., who is stumping for Haley, including that she has a good chance of defeating Trump in Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
"Republicans here in this state who are going to vote out in record numbers for President Trump realize that Nikki Haley is more of a liberal than she is a conservative," she said. "She was against President Trump's border wall. She supports amnesty. She is for open borders."
Haley, she added, has "doubled down" on promises to raise the retirement age and "wants to implement a 23% federal national sales tax that would crush hardworking, low-income, middle-class families here in New Hampshire — especially those who do not have a sales tax at all."
Norman also pointed to polls showing that Haley would more easily defeat Biden in a general election, and Leavitt insisted that is not true.
"There are far more polls showing President Trump beating Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup in November, and that's because he has the best sales pitch to all Americans," she said. "'Were you better under my policies, or were you better under Joe Biden's policies?' And any common-sense, rational American will agree that they were better off because of President Trump.
"We had record-low unemployment rates, record-low interest rates and mortgage rates. The American dream was alive and our border was secure, and there was peace around this world."
Haley, Leavitt continued, "has a liberal record, not a conservative one. Voters trust President Trump to get the job done. And, frankly, the only two Republicans in this country who don't believe that appear to be Nikki Haley and Congressman Ralph Norman."
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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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