Haley pushes back at Trump suggestion she'll drop out after NH primary: 'I don't do what he tells me to do'

HAMPTON, N.H. - Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley says she does not take orders from former President Trump.

"I don't do what he tells me to do," Haley, a former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration, told Fox News and other news organizations as she took questions from reporters outside a polling station in a coastal New Hampshire town on Tuesday morning.

Trump entered Tuesday's GOP presidential primary in New Hampshire holding a formidable double-digit lead over Haley in the final public opinion polls, and the former president was aiming for another convincing victory after crushing Haley and Florida Gov. DeSantis a week ago in Iowa's low-turnout presidential caucuses.

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DeSantis, who was a distant third in the surveys in New Hampshire, dropped out of the race on Sunday and endorsed Trump.

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At a rally on primary eve in Laconia, the former president noted that "we started off with 13 [GOP White House candidates] and now we're down to two people."

"And I think one person will be gone probably tomorrow," he predicted, as he pointed toward Haley.

Pushing back against questions from reporters on what percentage of the vote she needs in New Hampshire to continue on to South Carolina - her home state that holds the next major GOP presidential nominating contest on Feb. 24 - Haley said, "We’ll know strong when the numbers come in. It's not like a certain number. I don't go there and say, Oh, I have to have this number. I have to have that number."

"And I'm not going to talk about an obituary just because