Nikki Haley says Harris is Democrats’ ‘weakest candidate’ – but DEI attacks ‘aren’t helpful’

Former GOP presidential candidate and one-time UN Ambassador Nikki Haley said Republicans trying to paint Vice President Kamala Harris as a «DEI» candidate are not helping Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Haley made the comments on Thursday during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper.

She suggested that Republicans focus on Harris’s policies and her past as a politician in their criticisms, not her skin color or her gender. “It’s not helpful,” Haley said. “There’s so many issues we can talk about when it comes to Kamala Harris that it doesn’t matter what she looks like. It matters what she’s said, what she’s fought for, and the lack of results that she’s had because of it.”

Haley offered her own criticisms of Harris, saying the vice president was the «weakest candidate» the Democrats could have picked to replace Joe Biden, who announced his departure from the 2024 race on Sunday.

“She is much more progressive than Joe Biden ever was,” Haley said. “So, the fact they put in Kamala Harris – kudos for putting in someone younger – the fact that you put in one of the most liberal politicians you probably could have put in, it’s going to be an issue.”

Some Republicans have opted to focus on Harris' person, rather than her policies, in their attacks. Trump running mate Senator JD Vance attacked women such as Harris and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for not having children and, in his estimation no «direct stake» in the future of the US.

«We are effectively run in this country, via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,» Vance said in the 2021