Nikki Haley hammers Trump on fondness for dictators as South Carolina primary nears

Nikki Haley is fully on the offensive as she stares down the quickly approaching South Carolina primary, now less than one week away.

The former UN ambassador was on the Sunday show circuit this weekend as her campaign continues events through her home state and maintains that she will stay in the race through March — no matter what happens this coming Saturday.

On ABC’s This Week, Ms Haley attacked her opponent once again for his comments about Nato. The former president made an off-colour remark at a rally in the state on 10 February wherein he seemed to invite Russia to attack any Nato member-state deemed to be making insufficient contributions to its own national defence.

“[W]hen you hear Donald Trump say in South Carolina a week ago that he would encourage Putin to invade our allies if they weren’t pulling their weight, that’s bone chilling because all he did in that one moment was empower Putin,” said Ms Haley. “And all he did in that moment was he sided with a guy that kills his political opponents, he sided with a thug that arrests American journalists and holds them hostage.”

Those comments, she argued, were part of the favouritism Mr Trump has shown Vladimir Putin and the Russian government throughout his political career. After Russian agents were found to have worked against his political opponent Hillary Clinton during the 2016 US presidential election, Mr Trump would go on to declare at a joint press conference with Mr Putin that he accepted Russia’s explanation of its supposed innocence — despite the conclusions of the US intelligence community.

Ms Haley contended in the interview that the pro-Russia sentiment her opponent exhibits was playing into his lack of acknowledgement of the death on Friday of