Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who dropped her White House campaign against President-elect Donald Trump earlier this year, said Wednesday he won the popular and Electoral College votes because Americans did not know what to expect from Vice President Kamala Harris.
"The bottom line is, Americans wanted to know what to expect," the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in Trump's first administration said on her SiriusXM program, "Nikki Haley Live," making her first public comments on Trump's victory.
"They didn't want to walk into a dark room and figure it out, and I think now they know that whether you like Donald Trump's personality or not, the policies under Donald Trump matter," Haley said. "And it matters whether we're talking about what's going on with Israel, it matters whether we talk about what’s happening within the economy, it matters when it talks about our kids in schools."
Trump, she added, "literally defied gravity" by not only winning his race, but leading to the Senate returning to a GOP majority.
"He may possibly have taken the House with him too," said Haley, speaking while several House races remain too close to call.
"He said he was going to do it. He did it," she said. "He got through two assassination attempts. He got through two impeachments, he got through numerous indictments, and America still elected him because, at the end of the day, they knew what they were getting with Donald Trump. And that's what they wanted to see. So, look, this was a great moment for America. It was a great moment for democracy."
The results though, are a "wake-up call" for both parties, Haley said.
"This should be a wake-up call for the Democrat party that, look, you don't need to be leaning left," she said. "This should be a wake-up call for the Republican party, too. Don't take this for granted. When Donald Trump won the first time and swept the House and the Senate, they missed a lot of opportunities to get some serious things done. We need to make sure that Republicans really make this count. I mean, let's hope, I'm an optimist, let's hope we take the House, too. But if it's a clean sweep, there's a lot of work."
Haley added that Harris' interview on "The View" was what served to "tank" her election.
"The idea that Kamala Harris could not name one thing she would do differently than Joe Biden," she said. "Think about it. That let all of America know, this is going to be Biden 2.0 if Kamala Harris is elected."
Haley's podcast airs on Wednesdays from 8-9 a.m. ET on Sirius XM Triumph channel 111. She was joined Wednesday by her co-host, Chaney Denton, and her former campaign manager, Betsy Ankney.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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