GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Sunday she does not feel bound by the pledge she made to the Republican National Committee last year to support the eventual GOP presidential nominee, as she's not thinking yet about losing her race.
"I think I’ll make what decision I want to make, but that’s not something I’m thinking about," the former United Nations ambassador and ex-South Carolina governor said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "If you talk about an endorsement, you’re talking about a loss. I don’t think like that. When you're in a race, you don't think about losing. You think about continuing to go forward."
When pressed about whether voters in this week's Super Tuesday primary elections should know how she feels about a Trump endorsement, Haley responded, "When you all ask Donald Trump if he would support me, then I will talk about that. But right now, my focus is, How do we touch as many voters? How do we win?"
However, she insisted that the nation is going in a "bad direction" and new choices are needed "so that we can have Americans that feel like they have a government working for them again."
Haley, though, argued against Trump's Supreme Court case, in which he is seeking a ruling on presidential immunity.
"I don't think there should ever be a president that's above the law," she said. "I don't think that there should ever be a president that has total immunity to do whatever they want to do. I think we should have someone that our kids can look up to, that they can be proud of, and we need to have a country of law and order, a country of freedom, and a country that goes back to respecting the value of a taxpayer dollar, and we don't have any of that right now."
Haley added that voters deserve better options than Trump or President Joe Biden, "two guys in their 80s" who "continue to put this division between Americans."
Biden and Trump, she added, have not talked about a vision for the future, because "all they do is talk about each other in the past."
Haley also slammed the Republican National Committee, which last fall required all candidates to pledge to support the eventual GOP nominee in order to participate in the primary debates.
She insisted that the RNC is "not the same" one as it was last fall, as "now it's Trump's" RNC.
Ronna McDaniel has agreed to step down from her chair role with the RNC, and Trump has endorsed Michael Whatley, the North Carolina GOP chair, and Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, to take over as the group's co-chairs.
Haley also discussed federal protections for fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization, saying that the conversation about what happens to embryos must take place between patients and doctors.
"We don’t need to go and create a bunch of laws for something when we don’t have a problem," she said, but minutes later said she does think there should be federal protections.
She also argued that abortion should be decided at the state, not the federal level.
"This should be in the hands of the people, for the people to decide," Haley said. "They should decide whether their states are going to be pro-life or pro-choice. They should decide whether their states are going to be IVF or not IVF. I personally think we want as many fertility options for people as they can. That’s my opinion."
Other states, like Alabama, where the state Supreme Court ruled that embryos are people, may decide differently, she added.
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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