Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley on Sunday criticized her party’s leading contender for the White House nomination, Donald Trump, for avoiding meaningful comment on the death of Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned political nemesis of the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin.
“Either he sides with Putin and thinks it’s cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents – or he just doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal,” Haley said Sunday on ABC News This Week. “Either one of those is concerning. Either one of those is a problem.”
The attack which Haley aimed at Trump with respect to Navalny came six days before her home state of South Carolina was scheduled to host its Republican presidential preference primary. With the rest of the Republican field having dropped out, polls show Haley, the ex-governor of South Carolina, trails the former president by more than 30 percentage points.
Haley joined other prominent US politicos – including the Democratic president Joe Biden – in blaming Putin for Navalny’s death Friday at a Russian penal colony. Trump, on the other hand, has declined to directly remark on the death of Navalny, which authorities reportedly explained to his mother as occurring from “sudden death syndrome”.
The former president – who once appointed Haley to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations – has only pledged on social media to “bring peace, prosperity and stability” if he is given another term in the Oval Office.
Haley on Sunday said that Trump’s response had not gone nearly far enough.
“I think it’s important to stand with the Russian people who believe Navalny was really talking for them,” Haley told the host of This Week, Jonathan Karl. “I mean you look at this hero – he was fighting corruption, he was fighting what Putin does. And what did Putin do? He killed him just like he does all his political opponents. And I think that’s very telling.”
Haley added that the 47-year-old Navalny’s death was an opportunity for political leaders in the US “to remind the American people that Vladimir Putin is not our friend”.
“Vladimir Putin is not cool. This is not someone we want to associate with,” Haley said. “This is not someone we want to be friends with. This is not someone that we can trust.”
Nikki Haley on Donald Trump's silence following the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny: "Either he sides with Putin and thinks it's cool that Putin killed one of his political opponents, or he just doesn't think it's that big of a deal." https://t.co/RsWHoKjkvS pic.twitter.com/d6RQRyWxUh
— ABC News (@ABC) February 18, 2024
Haley’s remarks alluded to how Trump – during his presidency from 2017 to 2021 – demonstrated favor and, arguably, subservience to Putin. They also came a little more than a week after Trump caused global alarm with a campaign speech in South Carolina during which he declared that he would encourage Russia to attack any Nato allies whom he considered to have not paid enough to maintain the alliance.
The former UN ambassador on Sunday called Trump’s earlier Nato comments “bone chilling”.
“All he did in that one moment was empower Putin,” Haley said.
Throwing in a reference to Russia’s jailing of Wall Street reporter Evan Gershkovich on espionage charges which the US have dismissed as bogus, Haley continued: “All [Trump] did in that one moment was he sided with a guy who kills his political opponents – he sided with a thug that arrests American journalists and holds them hostage.
“And he sided with a guy who wanted to make a point to the Russian people: ‘Don’t challenge me in the next election, or this will happen to you, too.’”
Haley said Americans needed to “start waking up to what this means”, and she called it essential for Ukraine to fend off the invasion Russia launched nearly two years earlier.
Trump was entering the South Carolina primary under indictment on more than 90 criminal charges, including for trying to illegally nullify his defeat to Biden in the 2020 election. He is also faced with having to pay civil judgments in excess of half a billion dollars after being adjudicated a business fraudster as well as being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming magazine columnist E Jean Carroll.
Nonetheless, polls at the moment show Trump enjoys a relatively slight advantage with the American electorate over Biden.
