Republican presidential hopeful, Nikki Haley, has caused controversy this week after she blamed former President Obama, for divisiveness in the United States. Haley continues to trail Trump in the polls ahead of the 2024 Election later this year.
Nikki Haley appeared on The Breakfast Club radio show this week (January 31) where she was interviewed by hosts DJ Envy and Charlamagne tha God. The episode, titled ‘Nikki Haley Unpacks America’s Racist Roots, Abortion, Immigration & Her Plan To Save The Country’, has received widespread criticism.
In the interview the presidential candidate was asked what she disliked about the Obama administration and what she would have changed. Haley responded, “with Obama, that’s when we really started to feel the division”.
The former governor of South Carolina said, “everything was exaggerated” when Obama was elected and “it became more about gender, it became more about race”. Haley criticised the former president and said his administration was about “separating Americans instead of bringing them together”.
Charlamagne challenged Haley’s response, arguing it was the fault of the “right-wing media” who were “scared to death of a black president”. She said that under the Obama administration “people felt like they were being put in camps”.
Haley continued her criticism and called Obama “an Iranian sympathiser” before condemning the former president’s spending and tendency to govern by executive order. During her appearance on the show, she also admitted to having voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and discussed her previous comments about slavery and the civil war.
Critics have described both Haley and Trump as “talking rot in their own unique ways” and perpetuating “the kind of nonsense that was thrown out in bad faith” whilst Obama was president. In his article for Esquire, author Charles P. Pierce described Haley as “a soulless enough of a campaigner to put her self-awareness into a steamer trunk for the duration”.
Haley’s radio appearance on The Breakfast Club has received much disapproval. Commentator @ReecieColbert took to X and recapped Wednesday’s show saying, “this isn’t ignorance, it’s insidious”. The commentator expressed frustration at the former governor’s decision “to blame Obama for the unhinged racist backlash” and compared her attitude to one “that says Black’s shoulda stayed out of white neighbourhoods” to avoid trouble.
Another X user @PamKeithFL said “Obama did not create divisiveness” but “asshole white supremacists who couldn’t stand to see a Black man wield that kind of power”.
Author @jemelehill also conveyed her shock that Haley “really sat up there and blamed Obama for the political division” across the United States rather than acknowledge the role of Donald Trump, birtherism and the Republican Party who have only sought to “escalate racial hysteria”. She then called Haley “a white supremacist sympathizer”.
This recent stop on the campaign trail has not gone over well for Nikki Haley and it raises questions about the Republican’s chances ahead of the GOP Primary later this year.
Edited by: Kaiyah Ellison
Photo credit: Getty Images/Dia Dipasupil
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