Haley defends troops and says the golf course is the closest to where Trump has come to fight

In the final stretch before the South Carolina primaries, Nikki Haley goes all-in in attacking former President Donald J. Trump, her former boss and main rival, whom she is trailing by a wide margin in her home state.

Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, used Trump's comments this weekend about foreign policy and her family to question his fitness for office, after months of making light of his legal travails and increasing authoritarian rhetoric .

In Elgin, S.C., on Monday, she blasted Mr. Trump as disrespectful to military personnel, a threat to national security, and too corrupted by age to serve effectively. The tougher approach is central to her argument that the country does not want a rematch between President Biden and Mr. Trump and that she is more electable than the former president in a general election, even though polls show her behind Mr. Trump. more than 30 points in South Carolina.

Ms. Haley has used a special counsel report that suggested Mr. Biden is struggling with memory problems to argue that the same is true of Mr. Trump, citing his pairing of her with Representative Nancy Pelosi of California and his apparently off-color comments.

“The special counsel comes out and says he's mentally impaired,” Ms. Haley said of Mr. Biden, before adding: “That's not far from Donald Trump.”

She criticized the former president's comments over the weekend and insinuated that her husband, who is deployed to Africa with the National Guard, left the country to escape her. These comments, Ms. Haley said on Monday, were insulting to all military personnel, adding: “With that kind of disrespect for the military, he is not qualified to be president of the United States because I don't trust him to to protect the soldiers. them.”

When she spoke to reporters afterward, she became more personal.

“The greatest evil he's ever faced is when a golf ball hits him on a golf cart and you start mocking our men and women in the military?” she said. “I don't care what party you're at, that's not okay.”

Ms Haley also hit Mr Trump for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against US allies through payments to the military alliance. She said the comments put military personnel and “all of our allies at risk.”

“Donald Trump is siding with a criminal,” she said, pointing to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, a reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

And she said Mr. Trump had his “fingerprints on” a host of other examples of what she called Mr. Trump’s chaotic influence on the party, such as the collapse of a bipartisan border deal in Congress and reports of staff turnover at the Republican National Committee. Ms. Haley has also criticized Mr. Trump in recent weeks for spending $50 million in campaign funds on court hearings.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump, pointed to his record in office, saying, “There is no greater advocate for our brave military men and women than President Trump.”

“Nikki Haley advocates more foreign intervention and supports endless wars that would kill more American heroes,” Ms. Leavitt said in a statement. “It's a good thing she will never become commander-in-chief.”

Before the first Republican nominating contest in Iowa in January, Ms. Haley's stump speech, from which she rarely deviated, often touted her record in South Carolina, foreign policy experience as a United Nations ambassador and her vision for the future. But since the Iowa caucuses, where she finished third, she has gradually stepped up her attacks on Trump, from offhand comments about his administration increasing the national debt to centering his weaknesses in speeches.

Asked about her tougher approach, and why she didn't take that tone sooner, Ms. Haley said she had avoided such attacks because she wanted to focus on a vision for the future.

“If I make it about me, it's no different than what Donald Trump does every day because all he does is make everything about himself,” she said.

Ms. Haley's biggest challenge, however, was perhaps best reflected in her events themselves: At the Harley-Davidson dealership where she spoke on a rainy afternoon Monday, she addressed about 50 people, leaving some of the seats that had been set aside unfilled.

And some who attended weren't necessarily voters she needed to take Trump's lead. John Schuller, a 76-year-old Democrat, said he thought it was “arrogant and selfish” for Mr. Biden “not to step off the stage and let someone new come his way.” Ms. Haley, whom he plans to support in the primaries, seemed like a “reasonable voice” — though he acknowledged her path forward would be difficult.

“Miracles happen,” Mr. Schuller said. “I hope South Carolina can make a miracle happen.”