Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright said former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley failing to mention slavery as the reason for the Civil War was due to “Trumpism” on MSNBC’s “Yasmin Vossoughian Reports” on Thursday.
An audience member asked Haley what the cause of the war was during a Wednesday evening town hall in New Hampshire, and she responded that it was “was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.” Seawright said Haley did not note slavery because she is courting Republican voters that former President Donald Trump has influenced to be more extreme.
“There is no doubt she is peddling and playing footsie to extremism or Trumpism, [which] has now taken over the modern day Republican Party,” Seawright said. “For everyone watching at home, this is what happens when you want to whitewash history, ban books and not tell the full story of history … Nikki Haley is not new to this behavior, she’s true to this behavior. When she was a candidate in 2010, she indicated that the confederate battle flag was not about hate, it was about heritage.”
“I think this is more about who the modern day Republican party is and the effort to embrace Trumpism,” Seawright added.
Haley later clarified during an appearance on New Hampshire radio that she was discussing what the war “means to us today.”
Voting in New Hampshire begins in January, and Haley is polling at 24.8% support behind only Trump, who has 46.3%, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls conducted between Dec. 7 to Dec. 19.
Jason Cohen on December 28, 2023
