Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley has formally ended her presidential campaign.
Her announcement comes the morning after she won just one of the fifteen states that held primaries on March 5.
“I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that,” Haley said in a short speech that lasted fewer than five minutes in Charleston, South Carolina. “I have no regrets.”
Haley predicted that the United States’ national debt “will eventually crush” the country, emphasized the necessity of term limits and warned that the “world is on fire because of America’s retreat.”
“Standing by our allies in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan is a moral imperative,” she said. “If we retreat further, there will be more war – not less.”
“I sought the honor of being your president. But in our great country, being a private citizen is privileged enough in itself,” she continued. “And that is a privilege I very much look forward to enjoying.”
Haley acknowledged that “in all likelihood” former president Donald Trump will be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. She said she wished him well.
“Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us,” she said.
While Haley noted she has always been a Republican and supported the party’s nominee, the former governor of South Carolina invoked a quote from Margaret Thatcher, advising people to make up their own minds rather than follow the crowd.
“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of our party and beyond it who did not support him,” Haley said. “ At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause – not turning them away.”
“This is now his time for choosing,” she added.
As of 4 a.m. on March 6, Trump had secured a total of 995 delegates to Haley’s 89. Of Haley’s delegates, 17 came from her Super Tuesday win in Vermont. Trump, in contrast, won Alabama, Arkansas, Alaska, California, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Haley had vowed to not end her campaign in a speech on Feb. 20, warning that her departure would set up the “longest general election in history.”
“There are still eight and a half months before election day,’ she said, “Do we really want to spend every day from now until November watching America’s two most disliked politicians duke it out?”
Voters are almost guaranteed to see a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden in November.
