Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is cleaning up comments she made about the U.S. Civil War after catching heat from both sides of the political aisle.<\/p>\n
Haley faced a backlash from the White House and fellow Republicans on the campaign trail after she declined to mention slavery as the reason for sparking the U.S. Civil War during a town hall event on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run \u2014 the freedoms and what people could and couldn\u2019t do,\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n
\u2018It was about slavery,\u2019 President Biden posted on X with a clip of Haley\u2019s comments.<\/p>\n
\u2018Yikes,\u2019 the campaign of fellow GOP candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote.<\/p>\n
Haley has since clarified that she believes the Civil War was sparked by slavery but that the \u2018bigger issue\u2019 was determining the role of government in people\u2019s lives. She further addressed the issue during a press gaggle with New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu on Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think everybody thinks that the Civil War was about slavery. It was more, what\u2019s the bigger issue of it?\u2019 she explained to Fox News\u2019 James Levinson. \u2018You know, we went through 80 years of that, and we know that people were struggling with \u2018What\u2019s the role of government? What\u2019s the role of individual freedom?\u2019 And the lesson we should take away from the Civil War is, yes, never allow slavery to happen again. But what does that mean for government and the role of individual freedom?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018We want every person to have the freedom of speech, religion, to live their life without anyone doing anything to hamper that,\u2019 she said. \u2018That\u2019s what this was about. So, if it required clarification of saying, yes, the Civil War was about slavery, I\u2019m happy to do that.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018But look, I know it very well,\u2019 she added. \u2018I fought and took down the Confederate flag in South Carolina. I am very aware of what that is. But for us to move forward as a country, what\u2019s the lesson in it? And the lesson is every person deserves freedom, and we have to always fight for it every single day.\u2019<\/p>\n
Sununu also chimed in, saying Haley\u2019s comments were \u2018spot on.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Spot on. That\u2019s it. The Civil War is about slavery,\u2019 he told reporters. \u2018She acknowledged it.\u00a0Moving on.\u2019<\/p>\n
While Haley received some backlash for her initial comments, not everyone joined in the pile-on, with some conservatives arguing it was a \u2018gotcha\u2019 question.<\/p>\n
\u2018She couldn\u2019t have actually handled it better,\u2019 Fox News host Griff Jenkins said on \u2018Fox & Friends.\u2019 \u2018And in that moment, I think she handled it quite well, considering, and didn\u2019t give in to what would clearly, as you point out, a gotcha question.\u2019<\/p>\n\n
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is cleaning up comments she made about the U.S. Civil War after catching heat from both sides of the political aisle. Haley faced a backlash from the White House and fellow Republicans on the campaign trail after she declined to mention slavery as the reason for sparking the U.S. Civil <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":13369,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13368","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13368\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}