After Carroll statement, Haley says 'America can do better' than Trump or Biden
Nikki Haley criticized Donald J. Trump on Friday, saying “America can do better than Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” after a Manhattan jury ordered the former president to pay $83.3 million for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.
It was the latest version of Ms. Haley's new line of attack against Mr. Trump, portraying another Trump presidency as bad for the country as four more years of President Biden. Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, began making similar statements after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race on Sunday, making her the latest serious threat to Trump's candidacy.
“Donald Trump wants to be the presumptive Republican nominee and we are talking about $83 million in damages,” Ms. Haley wrote. on social media, adding that Mr. Trump's legal troubles continued to be a distraction. “We're not talking about fixing the border. We are not talking about tackling inflation.”
Ms. Haley is preparing for what may be the final stand of her presidential campaign, taking on Trump in a crucial primary in her home state of South Carolina next month. Ms. Haley has largely avoided commenting on Mr. Trump's lawsuits, but the former president leads her by wide margins in the polls, and it appears she's turning up the heat in an attempt to get him.
Mr. Trump lashed out on social media shortly after the verdict, labeling the civil trial a “Biden Directed Witch Hunt,” despite the fact that Ms. Carroll sued Mr. Trump in 2019, before he had left office and while Mr. Biden was still in prison. just one of many Democratic presidential candidates.
The ruling was an extraordinary moment for a front-runner in a presidential election race. A jury penalized Mr. Trump $83.3 million for defamation just three days after he won a second nominating contest — in New Hampshire, by 11 percentage points. Mr. Trump also faces 91 felony charges in four separate criminal cases.
“Absolutely ridiculous,” Mr Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social about the verdict, adding: “Our justice system has spiraled out of control and is being used as a political weapon. They took away all First Amendment rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”
Surrogates for Trump's campaign also criticized the verdict. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia wrote on social media that Mr. Trump was “denied a fair trial in New York, where judges are now political” activists. Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, who many believe is in the running to become Trump's vice president, said the trial was an attempt by Democrats to weaponize the justice system and “bankrupt” Trump .
Ms. Carroll accused Mr. Trump in 2019 of raping her in a department store dressing room decades earlier. Last May, another Manhattan jury awarded her $5 million after finding Mr. Trump liable for sexually assaulting her and defaming her in a social media post.
Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, a national co-chair of Mr. Biden's re-election campaign, said in an interview on CNN that the verdict “tells you something about” Mr. Trump's character, adding that “this is someone who thinks presidents should have immunity so they can do whatever they want.”