Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said former US President Donald Trump regularly tried to “buddy up with dictators” while he was in the Oval Office, pointing to his longstanding praise of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his support of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Haley, Trump’s last remaining major competitor after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race on Sunday, made the comments as the two up their attacks against each other ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
Haley has increasingly blasted Trump’s mental fitness, questioned his and President Joe Biden’s age and warned about the “chaos” he courts.
In an interview with Face the Nation on Sunday, she said America was tired of the former president’s magnetism toward conflict.
“I remember at the United Nations, I had to sit him down and tell him to stop this bromance with Putin,” Haley, who served as the US ambassador to the UN under Trump, said. “I mean, you can’t have someone who’s trying to buddy up with dictators that want to kill us. Instead, you have to let them know what we expect of them.”
She pointed to the death of American student Otto Warmbier in 2017, who was imprisoned in North Korea during her tenure at the UN. Haley said she was in regular contact with his parents after the country convicted him of trying to steal a poster from his hotel and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
“I worked with Cindy and Fred Warmbier. They’re amazing people,” Haley recounted Sunday. “I told Fred and Cindy, speak up. Get loud. Make sure. I will help you. Let’s partner. We’re going to call North Korea out.”
“But what did Trump do? Instead, he talked about love letters going back and forth to Kim Jong Un.”
Warmbier was ultimately returned to the US in a vegetative state and died just days later.
“No matter what it is, chaos follows him,” Haley repeated to host Margaret Brennan about Trump. “Rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him.”