Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is facing a lot of flak for her reply when she was asked about the civil war on December 28. She was speaking at a New Hampshire campaign event.
When she was asked what caused the Civil War at the town hall event her answer was, “I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how the government was going to run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
She did not mention slavery in her comment and tried to turn the question back to the attendee who said that he was not running for president and the question was for her to answer.
Slavery omission
She received a lot of brickbats for her answer and she said that the questioner is most likely a Democratic “plant”.
“We know when they’re there. We know what they’re doing,” she said in a subsequent radio interview.
The person who asked the question only identified himself as Patrick and told reporters later on that the question was “pretty fundamental and frankly pretty easy.”
She also said during the radio interview that of course she knows that the Civil War is about slavery.
“We know that. That’s the easy part of it. What I was saying was, what does it mean to us today? What it means to us today is about freedom. Yes, I know it was about slavery. I’m from the South, of course, you know it’s about slavery.”
Biden’s response
President Joe Biden responded to Haley’s comments with a post on X saying, “It was about slavery”.
Fellow Republican candidate Ron DeSantis said Haley’s comments to the radio station was an “Embarassing cleanup attempt,”. He posted that comment on X as well.
“If she can’t handle a question as basic as the cause of the Civil War, what does she think is going to happen to her in a general election,” DeSantis spokesman Andrew Romeo wrote on X on Thursday. “The Democrats would eat her for lunch.”
Cover Photo: Wikipedia