Nikki Haley doubles down on bizarre claim US was never a racist country

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has defended her claim that the United States has “never been a racist country”.

“The intent was to do the right thing,” Ms Haley said at a CNN town hall on Thursday after she was asked if she defended her comments, given the country’s history of legal racism, including slavery.

During the town hall, CNN host Jake Tapper pressed Ms Haley on her claim, pointing out that slavery was institutionalised in the constitution and the White House was built on slave labour. He also pointed out that Ms Haley’s home state, South Carolina, seceded from the Union and fought a war to defend the enslavement of Black people.

However, the former US ambassador to the United Nations doubled down on her comments, saying that America was founded on the idea that all men are created equal.

“Now, did they have to go fix it along the way? Yes, but I don’t think the intent was ever that we were going to be a racist country,” she said of the country’s founding.

“The intent was everybody was going to be created equally,” she added. “As we went through time, they fixed the things that are not, ‘all men are created equal.’”

She went on to say that developments to make everyone equal, including establishing women’s right to vote, happened over time, but she “refuse[s]” to believe that the “premise” of forming the country was based on racism.

Earlier this week, following Ms Haley’s third-place finish in the Iowa caucus, the GOP candidate sparked uproar when she was asked in a Fox News interview if she believed the Republican Party was racist.

Dismissing the suggestion that she would struggle to gain the GOP nomination as a woman of colour, Ms Haley responded: “No! We’re not a racist country… We’ve never