Nikki Haley Tears Into Trump In Closing Message Ahead Of South Carolina Primary

BEAUFORT, S.C. ― Nikki Haley knows she won’t win South Carolina.

But in the closing days of the GOP presidential primary here in Haley’s home state, the former South Carolina governor is making her most aggressive, if futile, case yet for why Donald Trump, her former boss, doesn’t deserve another chance at the White House.

With Saturday’s primary drawing near, Haley has suggested in recent days that Trump would rule as a king; slammed him for siding with dictators and abandoning allies; questioned his mental acuity; and warned that he would raise taxes while adding to the national debt and worsening the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Haley went from hardly mentioning Trump by name in Iowa ― the party’s first nominating contest, where she came in a distant third ― to focusing much of her stump speech on pitching herself as more competent and centered than either Trump or President Joe Biden.

At a rally in a moss-covered park in the coastal city of Beaufort on Wednesday, Haley tore into Trump over what she called his pattern of insulting current and former service members, including, most recently, her husband Michael , an officer with the South Carolina National Guard who is deployed in Africa.

“You mock one member of the military, you’re mocking every member of the military… [Trump’s] never worn a uniform. The closest he’s ever come to harm’s way is a golf ball hitting him on a golf cart,” Haley said to laughter from the crowd of several hundred.

“Bone spurs!” shouted a man in the audience, referring to the medical diagnosis that exempted Trump from serving in the Vietnam War.

“To hell with him!” another person yelled.

Many of the supporters drawn to Haley’s event — with the exception of a group of