Nikki Haley exits Republican presidential race

CNN —

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley announced Wednesday that she is exiting the Republican presidential race and urged presumptive nominee Donald Trump to “earn” the support of voters who backed her.

“The time has now come to suspend my campaign. I said I wanted Americans to have their voices heard. I have done that. I have no regrets,” Haley said during remarks in Charleston, South Carolina, following a series of losses in GOP nominating contests on Super Tuesday.

Haley congratulated Trump in her address but did not endorse him.

“I have always been a conservative Republican and always supported the Republican nominee, but on this question, as she did on so many others, Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice when she said, ‘Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind,’” the former governor said.

“It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the vote – those in our party and beyond it, who did not support him. And I hope he does that,” she said. Sources familiar with her plans told CNN prior to her speech that Haley’s approach appears to leave room for her to endorse Trump ahead of the general election.

Haley, who was Trump’s US ambassador to the United Nations, also used the speech to swipe at the former president’s isolationist foreign policy views, saying, “Our world is on fire because of America’s retreat.”

“Standing by our allies in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan is a moral imperative. But it’s also more than that. If we retreat further, there will be more war, not less,” she said.

Haley was the last of a dozen major candidates whom Trump vanquished in a GOP primary that he dominated from start to finish — including winning 14 of the 15 GOP contests on Tuesday – even as he skipped the