Nikki Haley on Sunday mocked Republican presidential primary rival Donald Trump’s demeanor when it comes to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Every time he was in the same room with him, he got weak in the knees,” Haley told a Fox News town hall in South Carolina. “We can’t have a president that gets weak in the knees with Putin. We have to have a president that’s going to be strong with Putin in every sense of the word.”
Haley’s comments came following the sudden death of Russian opposition leader and fierce Putin critic Alexei Navalny at a remote Arctic penal colony last week. He was 47. Many world leaders have blamed the death on Putin.
Haley did the same, pointing the finger at the Russian president and then saying that Trump, who has often lavished praise on his onetime counterpart, “needs to answer whether he thinks Putin is responsible for Navalny.”
Elsewhere in the town hall, Haley said she’d pardon four-times-indicted Trump if he was convicted in a federal court and she won the White House in November, because it wouldn’t be “a matter of innocence or guilt” by then but “in the interest of bringing the country together.”
“I would pardon Donald Trump because I think it’s important for the country to move on,” she added. “We’ve got to leave the negativity and the baggage behind. I don’t want this country divided any further. I don’t think it’s in the best interest for America to have an 80-year-old president sitting in jail and having everybody upset about it.”