The Truth About Nikki Haley

Nikki Haley is a political spitfire, and with the 2024 campaign season in full swing, she is on every pundit's radar. The 2024 presidential election is shaping up to be an interesting one, and while it appears that it might be a showdown between Donald Trump and Joe Biden once again, there's a wildcard in the mix: Haley finished third in the Iowa caucuses, the first of the year, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis taking second place to Trump. Haley remains undeterred despite landing third place. "Trump and Biden both lack a vision for our country's future, because both are consumed by the past, by investigations, by vendetta, by grievances. Americans deserve better," she said in her speech after the Iowa caucus results (via NBC News).

Some might think that Haley was overly optimistic when she announced she'd be competing for the Republican presidential nomination, but she's not one to back down when faced with a challenge. As Politico noted, Haley has been said to have a mean streak, but the way she sees it, she's simply not afraid to take charge. "I kick with a smile," she said to Politico. "It hurts them more when you're wearing heels."

Born in South Carolina in 1972 to Sikh Punjabi parents, Nikki Haley recognized at a young age that people treated her family differently. As she recalled to Politico, strangers would gawk at them when they were out in public, and a stand owner once called the police on her father when he was simply shopping for produce. "Hearing them make fun of him or what my mom was wearing, or when the country club opened up and they invited everybody, or we went to the picnic and nobody would sit with us — I remember that pain," she said. 

She endured racist comments and struggled to feel like she fit in with her classmates. "[O]ther kids wouldn't play with me unless I picked a team, which basically meant picking a race: Am I black or am I white? Issues like that kept coming up throughout my childhood and into adulthood," she told The New York Times. And yet, her longtime friend Tom Davis argues that this all shaped Haley to be the perfect presidential candidate. "She's been an outsider since day one, and never, not once, has she given up and become an insider like almost every other politician," he wrote in an opinion piece for The Post and Courier.

Nikki Haley didn't always aspire to become the next United States president. In fact, she never studied politics or showed any signs of having any interest in the field when she was younger. Rather, she pursued a career in accounting. 

Haley's knack for crunching numbers was evident when she was still a kid. When she wasn't busy with her studies at Orangeburg Prep, she did the books for Exotica, her parents' clothing boutique. She eventually went to Clemson University to study accounting, and it was here Haley discovered her talent for charming the socks off people. Some of her friends told Politico that, among other things, she even managed to negotiate a lower rent with a landlord.

After university, Haley worked as an accountant for a while. Nothing seemed to indicate that she was destined for political success. Even Orangeburg Prep's former student body president, Mikee Johnson, admitted that he was stunned by Haley's political ascent. "Let me put it this way. If you'd asked me back then, of the 100 people in her class, who might run for office one day, I would have put her in the bottom 10," he told Politico.

During her first weekend at university, Nikki Haley was introduced to a guy named Bill Haley. She didn't know it at the time, but he would eventually become her husband. In "Can't Is Not an Option," Nikki detailed her first meeting with Bill, who she thought was "quiet and cute" and "fun and interesting." She explained that she enjoyed his company but was a novice when it came to dating. "I wasn't ready to like him too much," she wrote. 

She and Bill stayed in contact and grew closer after he broke up with his girlfriend. The two shared stories about their childhood, and eventually, Bill told Nikki that he was interested in dating her... and someone else, "I gave him points for honesty, but that's about it," Nikki wrote, explaining that she told him he should go date the other girl because that's not how she operates in relationships. "He never did date the other girl," Nikki writes in the book. "We, however, went on to date for the next seven years."

Early on in their courtship, Bill shared his full name: William Michael Haley. Nikki decided "Michael" was a better fit than "Bill," so she started using his middle name from that point forward. Clearly, this stuck. "Everyone who knew him before I did knows him as Bill, and everyone who met him after I did knows him as Michael," Nikki wrote. They married in 1996.

When Nikki Haley sat down for an interview with The New York Times in 2012, she was asked about her decision to convert to Christianity after marrying Michael Haley. She told the outlet that while she did grow up reading English translations of Hindu scriptures when they were available, her connection to the faith was limited by the language barrier. "[T]he problem was I never took the time to learn the language," she said. "What it comes down to is that I knew the emotion of faith, I knew what my parents were trying to teach me, but we always said no when my mom was trying to teach us Punjabi. Now I wish we had learned, but that is why I think I made the transition."

Nikki could study Christian scripture in English with ease, which allowed her to connect to the religion on a different level. "With the Sikh faith, I understood the feeling of the faith, but I never understood the words so that's really what it was," she said, adding that her parents didn't oppose her decision to convert. What's more, she only has respect and reverence for the religion she grew up with. "The way they raised me was perfect, and it made me who I am," she said. 

When you think of Nikki Haley and Sarah Palin, there are plenty of similarities between the two; both made history when they were elected the governors of their respective states and neither backs down from a fight. It's no surprise that the two clicked when they met for the first time. Palin gave Haley some sound advice that day — and a warning about what was to come should she be elected South Carolina's governor.

"We were talking as we were riding in the car. I was telling her my stories, and she would say she had been through that, too. So much of it was that we realized we had a lot in common," Haley told The New York Times, adding that they found common ground when it came to navigating a political career in the spotlight. "She told me that once you start to gain steam, they are going to start attacking you and once they start attacking you, they will never stop even after you win. She was so right," Haley recalled.

Ever since that car ride, Palin and Haley have supported each other. Palin gave Haley her endorsement when she ran for governor in South Carolina in 2010, and in a statement following the endorsement, Haley called it "a tremendous honor" (via Politico). She returned the favor when Palin ran for Alaska's House seat in 2022, publicly supporting her on X (then Twitter) after she announced her candidacy.

Hillary Clinton came pretty close to making history as the United States' first female president, and as it turns out, she's the reason Nikki Haley is following in her footsteps in 2024.

When she sat down for an interview with the New York Times in 2012, Haley talked about how Clinton was the one who inspired her to run for office. It's no secret that, in the past, it was unheard of for women to attempt this. As Haley said, women were made to believe they couldn't run because they had other responsibilities; it was never a case of women not being capable of taking on the challenge. Haley herself had listed many reasons why she couldn't run for office, but then she attended an event where Clinton was one of the speakers, and it changed her outlook, and as a result, the course of her career.

"Everybody was telling me why I shouldn't run: I was too young, I had small children, I should start at the school board level," Haley explained. "I went to Birmingham University, and Hillary Clinton was the keynote speaker on a leadership institute, and she said that when it comes to women running for office, there will be everybody that tells you why you shouldn't but that's all the reasons why we need you to do it, and I walked out of there thinking 'That's it. I'm running for office.'"

Politics is a dirty business, and Nikki Haley experienced this firsthand when she was accused of having an extramarital affair during her gubernatorial campaign in 2010. The allegations surfaced a few weeks before the primary election. The timing was awfully suspicious; Haley was ahead of her competitors and looked set to win when her former employee, political blogger Will Folks, claimed he had an affair with her. "Several years ago, prior to my marriage, I had an inappropriate physical relationship with Nikki. That's it," he wrote in a statement on his website, FITSNews. He didn't elaborate, but he didn't have to — the damage was done. The week after, one of Lieutenant Governor André Bauer's paid fundraisers, a Columbia lobbyist, made similar claims, saying he had a one-night-stand with Haley.

Haley was furious and vehemently denied the allegations. "When they couldn't defeat me on the merits, that's what they did," she told Politico. "And they literally paid money to have that happen. And it's something that, I mean, I'll never get over it," she said. There isn't any proof that Haley's competitors paid money for the smear campaign, but she believes it to be true. It seemed many voters sympathized with Haley's conundrum, seeing the allegations as nothing but a vindictive attack from her competitors. She ended up winning the election.

It might have been a rocky road, but Nikki Haley managed to win the South Carolina gubernatorial election in 2010 and made history in the process. Haley became the first woman to ever be elected the state's governor while simultaneously becoming the second Indian American governor in America's history. That year, she and Susana Martinez became the country's first non-white female governors. 

Making history, however, was no easy feat, and at one point during the primary elections, Haley thought that she might lose to her competitor, Congressman Gresham Barrett. She ended up beating him by 30 points. It turned out that the extramarital affair allegations worked in her favor more than she could've bargained for. One of Barrett's campaign leaders, GOP consultant Terry Sullivan, told Politico in the aftermath that Barrett's campaign had plenty of ammunition to use against Haley, which ended up failing because the infidelity scandal was all the media cared about. "We had all this bad sh** on her — all these fines from the IRS, all these red flags from her accounting work, all these shady payouts she was taking as a consultant while working in the legislature — and we were going to beat her with it during the runoff," Sullivan admitted. "But that all went to waste."

Nikki Haley hasn't been afraid to make big moves. In 2015, she pushed for the Confederate flag to be removed from South Carolina's state capitol building. Her decision to call for its removal came after a mass shooter killed nine Black people at a church in Charleston. The shooter had a long history of promoting white supremacist views online, and was photographed wearing clothing adorned with white supremacist symbols. He also shared an image of the Confederate battle flag.

Haley, who on previous occasions didn't support the Confederate flag's total removal but rather opted to move it from the state capitol's dome, changed her mind after the shooting. She took the necessary steps to get the ball rolling to remove the contentious flag once and for all. "Today we are here in a moment of unity in our state without ill will to say it is time to remove the flag from our capitol grounds," Haley said in a speech. "This flag, while an integral part of our past, does not represent the future of our great state," she continued (via CNN). Less than a month after promising to make work of it, Haley signed a bill to remove the flag. This feat earned her a spot on Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people in the world in 2016.

When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, Nikki Haley wasn't afraid to publicly denounce him. "Donald Trump is everything we teach our kids not to do in kindergarten," she said on ABC News at the time. She also took jabs at his unsuccessful business endeavors and implied his tax records weren't on the up-and-up. As Politico recounted, Trump clapped back by calling Haley a "a b**ch." The two were also involved in a Twitter spat, with Trump tweeting, "The people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!" In classic Southern style, Haley replied, "Bless your heart."

Haley, unlike some of her GOP peers, never apologized or crawled back with her tail between her legs after Trump won the election. While she had been eager to become the new face of the Republican party in the face of what she thought was Trump's imminent loss, she had no plans to become part of his administration, and given Trump's proclivity for holding a grudge, her chances of working in the White House were practically zero anyway. 

But then, Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster, who endorsed Trump, asked the president to offer Haley a job she wouldn't be able to refuse because he wanted to replace her as governor. Trump obliged, and, somewhat surprisingly, he and Haley got along, with the latter telling Politico that many of their interests aligned. "On his policy, I agree with everything that he's done," she said.

The job Donald Trump offered Nikki Haley was that of the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Whether or not Haley was aware of the dealings between Trump and Lieutenant Governor Henry McMaster at the time is unclear, but she didn't give Trump an easy yes.

During one of her 2024 campaign speeches, Haley revealed how the conversation between her and Trump went down, saying that she accepted the job under three conditions, the first of which was that she wanted to work with Trump directly. The second was that she wanted to be part of the decision-making process. "I said, 'I'm a policy girl,'" she recalled to Politico. "So, I need to be on the National Security Council." The third condition was that she wanted to be able to speak her mind. "I said, 'Well, I'm not going to be a wallflower or a talking head. I need to be able to say what I think.' And he said, 'Nikki, that's exactly why I want you to do this.' And he was true to his word from the first day to the last day," she said.

Haley didn't stick around for Trump's entire time in office. In 2018, she stepped down from the position. In her resignation letter, she wrote (via The Hill), "As a strong supporter of term limits, I have long believed that rotation in office benefits the public."

When Donald Trump first ran for president in 2016, there were whispers that Nikki Haley was on his list of potential running mates, but Trump squashed the rumors and Mike Pence got the job. Former national security advisor to the Trump administration, H.R. McMaster, told Politico that Haley, in her capacity as the United Nations Ambassador, often outperformed Pence in the White House, all without breaking a sweat. This apparently drove a wedge between Haley and Pence.

With the 2024 elections looming, there are rumors about Haley planning to drop out of the race and become Trump's running mate. However, she's made it clear that being vice president is off the table — it's the presidency or nothing at all. 

"I don't play for a second. I've never played for a second. I'm not going to start now. I'm not interested in being vice president. I'm running to be president and I'm running to win and we will," Haley said on CBS News' "Face the Nation" in January 2024. She also had a message for those who plan on giving Trump their vote. "If you want four more years of chaos, that's what you're gonna get," she said. "But what's more concerning is, if you look at those head-to-head polls, Trump and Biden are pretty much even. It's gonna be a nail-biter of an election. We're gonna be holding our breath — I don't want a President Kamala Harris."

When Nikki Haley spoke to Politico shortly after the 2020 election results were in, America was caught in a period of immense tension. Donald Trump insisted that the election had been stolen from him; Haley, who had never been afraid to stick it to Trump, admitted that she hadn't tried to reason with him. "I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged. This is not him making it up," she said at the time. This statement seemed borderline uncharacteristic for Haley, as she'd challenged Trump publicly in the past. She did, however, insinuate that he would concede if his Texas lawsuit was unsuccessful. She was wrong.

Immediately after the January 6 insurrection, Haley changed her tune to some degree. During a speech she delivered at the Republican National Committee meeting the day after the insurrection, she said, "[Trump] was badly wrong with his words yesterday. And it wasn't just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history." Fast forward to 2023, and Haley started openly condemning the insurrection and all who took part in it. "I don't know enough about each individual [rioter] but that's my rule: If you break the law, you pay the price," she told the crowd at a town hall (via NBC News).

In 2021, Nikki Haley told the media that she wouldn't run against Donald Trump if he chose to enter the 2024 presidential race and that she would support the former president should he make another bid for the White House. "That's something that we'll have a conversation about at some point, if that decision is something that has to be mad," she told the AP.

By the time 2023 rolled around, however, it appeared that Haley changed her mind. She announced her bid for the White House in February of that year. "The Washington establishment has failed us over and over and over again. It's time for a new generation of leadership to rediscover fiscal responsibility, secure our border, and strengthen our country, our pride, and our purpose," she said in her announcement speech (via CNN).

It appears that Haley kept her word to talk it out with the former president before announcing that she was seeking her party's nomination. At least, that's what Trump told reporters when asked about his new rival. He claimed that Haley told him she wanted to run, and that he told her, "You should do it." For all the apparent talks the two had prior to going head-to-head for the Republican nomination, Trump is engaging in quite a bit of mud-slinging now that the campaign season is in full swing, saying that Haley should've stayed out of the race.

With Nikki Haley challenging Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, it didn't come as a surprise when she finally turned against him. While she hadn't engaged in the same mud-slinging campaign the former president has launched against her, she's spoken candidly about him while trying to remain respectful. "I don't talk about opponents. I never have. I don't think you want to hear it," she said at an event in New Hampshire in January 2024 (via Politico).

While making a speech in Iowa, Haley firmly set herself apart from Trump while also managing to somewhat appeal to his loyal fans. "I personally think President Trump was the right president at the right time," she said, "I agree with a lot of his policies, but the reality is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him." She then continued to explain that America couldn't survive another year of that. "You don't defeat Democrat chaos with Republican chaos," she added, explaining that she used to tell Trump that he was "his own worst enemy" (via CNN). In another speech, Haley said that the country needs a president who has moral clarity and that her way of doing things won't mimic that of Trump's. "I don't have vengeance, I don't have vendettas. I don't take things personally. For me, it's very much about no drama, no whining, and getting results," she said, adding that she had lost faith in Trump's ability to lead America (via CNN).

Nikki Haley might appear to be infinitely ambitious, but that's not necessarily how she sees herself. As she put it in her book "With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace," "If being ambitious is being good at your job, then fine, you can call me ambitious, I will just consider myself a bada**."

It's a word that comes up a lot in regards to Haley. While Politico referred to her as "canny," "combative," and "confrontational," Mick Mulvaney, former White House chief of staff, told the outlet, "She may be the most ambitious person I've ever met." Haley's friends say that her list of enemies is pretty long but that she's taken care to build lasting relationships with the people who matter. In her book, Haley noted the contempt she has for the word "ambitious." "When it's said about a man, it means he's entrepreneurial, he's a 'striver,'" she wrote. "But when a woman is called ambitious, it's an indictment, like she's stepping out of her lane." Haley then admits that she used to abhor being called ambitious, but that she learned not to add so much weight to the word. She has stopped worrying about what people may or may not be insinuating when they use it, and she encourages other women to do the same.

Throughout her political career, Nikki Haley has been compared to a few other politicians. One name that's come up more than once: Bill Clinton. "In my lifetime in politics, the only person I've seen that I can compare her to is Bill Clinton," Senator Tom Davis told Politico. "She has that same charisma, that same pulse on people, that same force of personality." As Politico pointed out, Clinton and Haley have both been called slick, too. 

The world of politics isn't for the faint of heart, and those who've worked alongside Haley certainly wouldn't call her meek. Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Haley is also very good at handling prospective enemies. Former chairman of the state Republican Party, Katon Dawson, concurred, telling Politico that Haley isn't someone you want to cross swords with. "Listen, man. She will cut you to pieces," he said. "Nikki Haley has a memory. She has a memory," he reiterated. "She will remember who was with her and who was against her. And she won't give a second chance to anyone who she thinks did her wrong."

Hillary Clinton, who inspired Nikki Haley to run for office all those years ago, became the first woman to be nominated by her party for the presidential election. The Republican Party has yet to make this kind of history, but there's a chance in 2024. If Haley manages to beat Donald Trump for the Republican nomination in the primary elections, she will make history once again, not only becoming the Republican party's first female presidential nominee but also the first Indian American person to be nominated by the GOP. But does she have a shot? Many say not to underestimate Haley, who has proven on more than one occasion that she's a force to be reckoned with. As Politico pointed out, Haley has not lost an election as of this writing. Could this lucky streak take her all the way to the White House?

Some think so. "A lot of people have underestimated her and a lot of people have been wrong," South Carolina journalist Randy Covington told the BBC. Former Carolina House speaker David Wilkins noted that Haley's ability to connect with others could take her far. "She has the X factor," he said. And one Iowa resident told the BBC that Haley seems to be less chaotic than some previous presidents, which is a good thing. "We need to get out of the era of politics that is dominated by what someone tweeted," they said. And Haley might manage just that — for better or worse.