Nikki Haley Speaks at Rally in Raleigh, North Carolina

(singing) Oh, that [inaudible 00:00:16] to see everybody. Raleigh, you know how to bring it. God bless you. Thank you. It’s a great day to be here in my sister state. It has been a journey. It has been over a year since I announced I was running for president. We had 14 people in the race. We defeated a dozen of the fellas. I just have one more I’ve got to catch up to. And the reason all of us are so passionate, the reason that we are all moving in this direction is because we don’t have to turn on the news to see what’s happening. We’re $34 trillion in debt. We’re having to borrow money just to make our interest payments. China owns some of that debt.

(01:08)
For the first time we’re paying more in interest payments than we are in our defense budget. Do you know who pays attention to that? Russia, China, and Iran. And you go and you look at what’s happening. No one is talking about the debt. No one’s talking about how tough things are out there. You feel it. Your paycheck doesn’t go as far. Your grocery bill is a whole lot higher. So are your utility bills. And I would love to tell you that Joe Biden did that to us and he sent us down this roller coaster of socialism that’s dangerous, but I have always spoken in hard truths and I’m going to do that with you today. Donald Trump and our Republicans did that to us too. You go back and look at that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill that they passed with no accountability. It expanded welfare that’s now left us with 80 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps. That’s a third of our country.

Wow.

And did Republicans try and make it right? No. They followed suit and opened up pet projects and earmarks for the first time in 10 years, passing through 7,000 of them last year. In the 2024 appropriations budget, Republicans put in $7.4 billion worth of pet projects. Democrats put in 2.8 billion.

Wow.

Now you tell me who the big spenders are, all while one in six American families can’t afford their utility bill, 60% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, 50% of American families can’t afford diapers. Something’s got to give. Don’t you think it’s finally time we had an accountant in the White House? So how would this accountant go about fixing the economy? The first thing we’d do is we call back the $100 billion of unspent COVID dollars that are still sitting out there. Instead of 87,000 IRS agents going after Middle America, let’s go after the hundreds of billions of dollars of COVID fraud. One out of every $7 was spent fraudulently. If 8% of our budget is interest, quit borrowing. Cut up the credit cards. You have to balance the budget every day. I had to balance the budget as governor. Why is Congress the only group that refuses to balance the budget?

(03:45)
We’ll stop the spending. We’ll stop the borrowing. We’ll eliminate their earmarks, and I will veto any spending bill that doesn’t take us back to pre-COVID levels. That will save us trillions. And then we’ll take as many federal programs as we can and we’ll send them down to the state level. That will dramatically reduce the size of the federal government, but it will empower people on the ground. Think education, think healthcare, think welfare, think mental health. If we took those resources, cut the strings, and sent them down to the states. Those resources are best decided closest to the people as opposed to Washington bureaucrats.

(04:27)
And then we’re watching the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We have got to open up the middle class. That’s why we want to do tax cuts for the middle class and simplify the practice. We want to eliminate the federal gas and diesel tax and we want to make small business tax cuts permanent. Small businesses are the heartbeat of our economy. We need to start acting like it. And when you talk about Congress, Congress has one job, one job, and that’s just to give us a budget on time. In case you haven’t turned on the TV, they didn’t do that. Do you know Congress has only given us a budget on time four times in 40 years?

No.

Four times in 40 years. You know what I’d say to that? “You don’t give us a budget on time, you don’t get paid, period.” Don’t you think it’s finally time we had term limits in Washington, D.C.? Don’t you think we need to have a mental competency test for anyone over the of 75? Now, I want to be clear. I’m not being disrespectful when I say that. We all know people over 75 that can run circles around us. And then we know Joe Biden.

Nikki’s right.

Congress has become the most privileged nursing home in the country.

Throw them out.

These are people making decisions on the future of our economy. These are people making decisions on our national security. We need to know they’re at the top of their game. We can’t play with this.

That’s right.

And then let’s talk about the border. I can’t believe we would allow this in the United States of America. Nine million illegal immigrants have come to that border. We’ve had more fentanyl cross the border last year that would kill every single American. Number one cause of death for adults 18 to 45, fentanyl. And don’t think for a second China doesn’t know what they’re doing when they send it over.

That’s right.

When I was governor of South Carolina, we passed the toughest illegal immigration law in the country. President Obama sued us over it and we won. I want to take what we did in South Carolina and go national with it. Let’s do a national E-Verify program so that every business has to prove that the people they hire are in this country legally. Let’s defund sanctuary cities once and all. No more safe havens in America.

(07:25)
We’ll put 25,000 border patrol and ICE agents on the ground and let them do their job. We’ll go back to the Remain in Mexico policy so that no one steps foot on US soil. And instead of catch and release, we’ll go to catch and deport. That is what will stop what’s happening on the border. But you know what was interesting is two weeks ago, Congress came up with a border bill. Now, in that border bill, what was good about it was it strengthened

… asylum laws. We have to strengthen the asylum laws because 3 million illegal immigrants came in under Trump’s watch because our asylum laws weren’t strong enough. What was weak about the bill was they didn’t have remain in Mexico. We have to have that. And they had a 5,000 person threshold. We can’t even have a one person threshold. But what bothers me is what normally should have happened was Congress would’ve gotten in a room and debated until they strengthened it to get it out. But instead, what happened? Donald Trump told Congress not to do anything until after the general election because it would hurt him. We can’t wait one more day to pass a strong border bill. Congress need to get in a room, strengthen that bill, do their job, and Trump needs to stay out of it, period.

(09:00)
And you know when growing up in rural South Carolina, my parents always taught me that you take care of those who take care of you. I’m going to ask you for taking care of those who take care of us. Right now in America, over 35,000 of our veterans are homeless. One in three suffers from PTSD or thoughts of suicide. We lose 22 heroes a day to suicide. If a veteran needs a doctor’s appointment, at the VA on average, it takes 29 days. Why 29 days? Because on the 30th day, they can go to the doctor or hospital of their choice. So midway through the 29 days, they get a call to reschedule and the clock starts all over again. It’s shameful how we treat our veterans. Now, I’m the proud wife of a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan. And when Michael came home to us, that was a lot of prayers answered, but that was the easy part. When we got home, life got hard. Michael couldn’t hear loud noises. He couldn’t be in crowds. Life had passed him by for the year that he was gone, and the transition was tough. We can’t just love our men and women when they’re gone. We got to love them when they come back home too. Let’s do better than just a two week transition. Let’s take care of them for the long haul. We should do telehealth so they can get the mental health care they need, right when they need it. They should be able to go to the doctor or hospital of their choice. They’ve earned that right. And I think the best way we go about dealing with VA healthcare, I think every member of Congress should have to get their healthcare from the VA, and you watch how fast that gets fixed. It’ll be the healthcare you’ve ever, guaranteed. Guaranteed.

(11:16)
And speaking of our military, let’s talk about national security. The world is on fire, literally. You’ve got a war in Europe, you’ve got a war in the Middle East, you’ve got North Korea testing, intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of hitting the US, you’ve got China doing cyber attacks on our infrastructure, and now we have Russia blinding satellites so we can’t see what they’re doing. Make no mistake, none of that would’ve happened had we not had that debacle in Afghanistan. The idea that Michael and his military brothers and sisters who served there had to watch us leave Bagram Air Force base in the middle of the night without telling our allies who switched shoulder to shoulder with us for decades because we asked them to be there, think about what that said to our friends. More importantly, think about what that said to our enemies. Now is the time that we need a leader with moral clarity. We need a leader who knows the difference between right and wrong and good and bad. Two weeks ago, Donald Trump said that he would stand with Putin and encourage him to invade our allies.

(12:57)
Now, think about that. I don’t care if he went off the helicopter when he did it. That’s what he felt. But the problem with that is you need to tell me that Trump is willing to side with a dictator who kills his political opponents, trump is willing to side with a thug who arrests American journalists and holds them hostage, Trump is willing to side with a tyrant who’s made no bones about wanting to destroy America, and Trump is going to side with a madman over our allies who stood with us after 9/11? In that one moment, he made our allies vulnerable, he emboldened Putin, and he put our military men and women who are serving there in danger. And now you hear from Trump, and from now the Republicans following suit, that you have to choose between Ukraine and Israel and the board. They are flat out lying to you. And that’s the problem. No one is telling the American people the truth.

(14:07)
I don’t believe we should give cash to any country, friend or enemy, because you can’t follow it. You can’t hold it accountable. But the goal of a president should always be to prevent war, and believe Putin when he says once he takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. Those are NATO countries that immediately puts America at war. This is about preventing war. They need to have the equipment and ammunition to win so that we don’t have to go to war. This is the part they don’t want you to know. Securing the border’s priority number one, period. But if we just helped Ukraine and Israel, that’s only 5% of our defense budget. If we helped Ukraine Israel and secure the border, that’s less than 20% of Biden’s green subsidies. So don’t let them lie to you and say that you have to choose.

(15:29)
A president in Congress has to choose preventing war, a president in Congress has to choose protecting Americans, and a president in Congress owe you the truth. And that’s what you’re not getting, and I will always give that. So we know what we need to do on national security. We know what we need to do with domestic policy. Now, let’s talk about what you

We need to do on Tuesday.

Already voted for you.

Because right now, the people of North Carolina have a decision to make. Do you want more of the same or do you want to go in a new direction? 70% of Americans don’t want Donald Trump or Joe Biden. 60% of Americans have said they think Donald Trump and Joe Biden are too old to be president. Now is the time we need a new generational leader that can put in eight years, day and night, fixing the things we need fixed with no negativity, no drama, no vendettas, just real results for the American people.

(16:49)
And we need someone who can actually win a general election. There was another two polls that come out. One last week, a Marquette poll came out and it showed that Joe Biden, Donald Trump margin of error. We’re going to be biting our nails, figuring out what happened. I’m in that same poll, and I defeat Joe Biden by 18 points. Another poll came out today that they’re talking about on the news. Donald Trump squeaks by. I defeat Joe Biden by 10 points. The issue with all of this is, you win by that much, that’s bigger than the presidency. That’s House, that’s Senate, that’s governorships, that’s school boards. That’s finally turning our country around. You win by double digits, that’s a mandate going into D.C. to stop the wasteful spending and get our economy back on track.

(18:00)
That’s a mandate getting our kids reading again and go back to the basics in education. That’s a mandate to secure our borders with no more excuses. That’s a mandate for law and order back in our cities, and that’s a mandate for a strong America that prevents wars that we can all be proud of. Don’t you want that? We could have that. But in order to have that, it’s going to take a lot of courage. Courage from every person here. Courage for me to run, and courage for every one of you to know, don’t complain about what happens in a general election if you don’t vote in this primary.

(18:47)
It matters. I also want to point out what’s happened in the last couple of months. They said we wouldn’t make it to Iowa. We did. New Hampshire, the day of the vote, they said we were down 30 points. We got 43% of the vote. That night, Donald Trump got on stage and was completely unhinged. All he did was talk about revenge and my dress. Then the next day he said, “Anyone who supports her is barred permanently from MAGA.” And then the next day after that, he pushed the RNC to name him the presumptive nominee.

(19:41)
We don’t anoint kings in America. We have elections. Then he had a couple of court cases that he lost and some judgments, and he’s been on a rant about how he’s a victim. The problem with all of that, whether it’s the night of New Hampshire or whether it was after these court cases, at no point is he talking about the American people.

(20:11)
At no point is he talking about the fact we’re $34 trillion in debt. At no point is he talking about the fact that only 31% of eighth graders in our country are proficient in reading. At no point is he talking about the lawlessness on the border and what he could have done to stop it. At no point is he talking about law and order in our cities, and at no point is he talking about wars around the world. All he’s doing is talking about himself. And what he doesn’t get, this isn’t about him. This is about the American people.

(20:41)
And just last night he tweeted, because we had a great crowd in Washington D.C., he tweeted and said, “Anyone who supports her or helps her will not have access to me.” And that lends the conversation to where we are seeing our country go, because Donald Trump is now redefining the Republican Party. I believe that our national debt matters. I believe in fiscal restraint. I believe in smaller government. I believe in economic freedom.

(21:39)
Donald Trump put us $8 trillion in debt in just four years. He loves to say that was because of Covid. That was less than 20%. Instead of shrinking our agencies, he grew our agencies. Instead of cleaning them out, he let them get cluttered. He actually added to the problem. And Republicans now are following suit when they’re doing all the spending. And the other side is, I believe that national security is about peace through strength.

(22:12)
I believe that when we strengthen our alliances, it puts our enemies on their heels, because they’re intimidated by that. But Donald Trump believes that we need to retreat. He believes we need to let them do what they want. I will tell you this, America can never be so arrogant to think we don’t need friends. We always need friends. And now Donald Trump is going so far to deal with the RNC party structure.

(22:50)
Before the primary is over, he has already put his daughter-in-law as head. He’s put his campaign manager to run it, and they have announced that the RNC is no longer about winning races up and down the ticket. It’s about Donald Trump. Now, he spent $60 million in campaign contributions on his own personal court cases. This is now about him making the RNC his own legal slush fund, and no one is saying anything.

(23:29)
And what I’ll tell you is, that there is a resolution that has been put down that asks the question about whether the RNC can spend money on his legal fees. You have three people in North Carolina that represent you. They need to show us a vote on the record. We need to see exactly how every one of those committee members votes for the RNC, so that we know exactly what they’re doing with any money that goes there. But this is a pattern.

But this is a battle. I was in Michigan. In 2012 Michigan was a bright light. They basically were winning seats up and down the ticket. They had done right to work. I had been there. I was campaigning for people. They were celebrating. Since Donald Trump became president, they lost the governor’s mansion, they lost the State House, they lost the state Senate. I went to Minnesota, the exact same thing happened. I went to Colorado after that. No Republican has gotten above 45% statewide since Donald Trump became president. We lost in 2018. We lost in 2020. We lost in 2022. You look at what happened two weeks ago, Republicans lost the vote on [inaudible 00:24:43]. They lost the vote on Israel. The RNC chair lost her job and he had his fingerprints in all of it. How many more times do we have to lose before we realize, maybe Donald Trump is the problem?

(24:55)
Eight months ago, I dropped my husband Michael off at 4:00 A.M. for another year-long deployment, and I watched him and 230 soldiers pick up their two duffel bags of belongings to go to a country they’ve never been, all in the name of protecting America. They’re willing to sacrifice their lives and their families because they still believe in this amazing experiment that is America. So if they’re willing to sacrifice for us there, shouldn’t we be willing to fight for America here? Because we have a country to save. All the media’s losing their minds. They’re like, “Why does she keep fighting? Why does she keep doing this?” I think I’ve pretty much proven I’m not trying to be vice president, and if this was about my political career, trust me, I would’ve been out a long time ago. The reason I’m doing this is because of my kids. It’s because of your kids and our grandkids.

You go girl.

If you look at the younger generation, look at what they’ve been through. They went through COVID, which was traumatic. Then they see this $34 trillion in debt. They know they’re going to end up being responsible for it. They worry about getting a job. They worry about making ends meet. They don’t know that they’re ever going to be able to go afford a home, and they feel these wars around the world. And all of that is under this umbrella of America, the school of anger and division, and then we want to know why there’s so much stress, anxiety and depression.

(27:04)
Our kids deserve to know what normal feels like. It’s not normal under Joe Biden to have millions of legal immigrants come across the border and nobody stopped them. It’s not normal under Joe Biden to focus more on gender pronouns and whether our kids can read them. It’s not normal to have all these wars around the world, and it’s not normal, under Donald Trump, to sit there and mock the military. It’s not normal under Donald Trump to side with a tyrant over our allies. It’s not normal for Donald Trump to spend campaign contributions on his own personal court cases, and it’s not normal for Joe Biden to opponents fascist and Donald Trump to call his opponents vermin. None of this is normal.

(27:58)
When I announced that I was running, they asked me why and I said, “My parents came here 50 years ago to an America that was strong and proud and full of opportunities. I want them to know that country again. I’m doing this for Michael and his military brothers and sisters. They need to know their sacrifice matters. They need to know that we love our country. I’m doing this for my daughter who just got married and I saw how hard it was for her and her husband to buy a home. The average home buyer in America now is 49 years old. The American dream is leaving them. And I’m doing this for my son who’s a senior in college, and I am tired of watching him write papers of things he doesn’t believe in just to get an A.” That’s not us. That’s not normal.

(29:00)
For the first time 81% of Americans don’t think their kids are going to live as good of a life as we did. We can’t be okay with that. I’m not okay with that. We do have a country to save, but let me say this. There’s a lot of us that want normal again, but we have to go and do something about it. You can go vote today before three o’clock. So I need everybody to vote. I need you to take 10 people to vote with you. I need you to take a yard sign, and if you’re one of those people that can’t have a yard sign in your yard, put it at the back of your car. I need you to text and email all your friends, all your family, because you’ll be shocked at how many people are only general election voters, and I want you to give them a message for me. In a general election, we’re given a choice. In a primary, we make our choice. Let’s go make our voices loud. Come on Raleigh, I know we can do it. [inaudible 00:30:02]. Thank you very much.

(30:02)
Thank you very much.