Nikki Haley Holds a Campaign Town Hall in Derry, New Hampshire Transcript

Thank you so much. Thank you. It’s great to be back in the Granite State again. I’ve got to tell you, first of all, I mean this is an amazing opera house. So, I want to thank Mary with the opera house and everyone who helped us put this together. I want to thank Jimmy Mack for also helping and being here. And it cracks me up when the general says, “I’m just a regular guy.” He can call himself a regular guy all he wants, but regular guys don’t go and serve and sacrifice themselves and go to Afghanistan 10 times. 10 times. Not just a regular guy retires out of the military and says, “Oh, I’m going to be a law enforcement officer,” and is now continuing to serve the Granite State. And so, general, you’re a friend, you’re a hero, you’re a patriot, and I am blessed to know you. Thank you. We stand on your shoulders for sure.

(01:26)
So, how many of you are here to hear me for the first time? Where have y’all been? It’s so good to see all of these new faces and new people out here. We’re thrilled to have you. I was born and raised in a small rural town in South Carolina, 2,500 people, two stoplights. You couldn’t think about doing something wrong without somebody already telling your mom. My mom started a business out of the living room of our home. And 30 plus years later, it was a successful company. I started doing the books for the family business when I was 13. It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that was child labor. I’m not an Ivy Leaguer. I went to a public university. I went to Clemson. Go, Tigers. Graduated with a degree in accounting. Accountants are problem solvers, remember that. I went on and worked in the corporate world and then I came back home to the family business. And one day I happened to be telling my mom how hard it was to make a dollar and how easy it was for government to take it. And my mom said, “Quit complaining about it. Do something about it.” I truly did not know you weren’t supposed to run against a 30-year incumbent in a primary. I didn’t. Ignorance is bliss. I had never been involved in politics. And once I realized he was related to half the district, the only option was to win. So, I went around the district and I said, “We have way too many lawyers at the State House. I think we just need a really good accountant.” And the people took a chance on me and we won.

(03:12)
And when I got to the State House, my focus really was on small businesses, because small businesses are the heartbeat of our economy and I wanted to fight for them. And so, I really got involved and started focusing on that. And after three or four years in South Carolina, everything was voted on by a voice vote. All in favor, say aye. All opposed, nay. The ayes have it. But one day they put through legislation that we give legislators a pay raise. All in favor say aye. All opposed, silence. The ayes have it. Yet to this day, you can’t find anyone that says they voted themselves a pay raise. I was furious, because we had a Republican house, a Republican senate, and a Republican governor. And so, I filed a bill that said anything important enough to be debated on the floor of the House or the Senate is important enough for people to know how their legislators voted.

(04:07)
And the speaker of the House said, “Put the bill away. We don’t need to have it. We will decide what the public needs to see and what they don’t.” To sum it all up, after I refused to put the bill away, they stripped me of all of my seniority. They stripped me of all of my committee assignments. I could take the, well, no one would hear me speak. I could sponsor a bill, no one would co-sponsor. So, I ran for governor. And I’m proud to say one of the first bills we signed into law is now in South Carolina. Anything debated on the floor of the House or the Senate requires a legislative vote on the record. And we took it a step further and we did it on every section of the budget as well.

(04:53)
And I love music. I hope you enjoyed my playlist that I was playing earlier. I love music. So, on the day of the bill signing, I blasted throughout the State House Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot. When I became governor, South Carolina was hurting. We had 11% unemployment, we had thousands of people on welfare, and South Carolina was the butt of the jokes. And we got to work. And by the time I left, we were building planes with Boeing. We were building more BMWs than any place in the world. We brought in Mercedes-Benz, we brought in Volvo, five international tire companies. They were referring to South Carolina as the beast of the southeast, which I still love. We moved that 11% unemployment down to 4%. We announced jobs in every county in the state and we acknowledged the truth. We said, “If you have to show picture ID to buy Sedivet, if you’ve got to show picture ID to get on a plane, you should have to show picture ID to protect the integrity of the election process.” We passed voter ID in South Carolina.

(06:14)
We passed one of the toughest illegal immigration laws in the country. We reduced taxes, we filled our coffers, we grew our economy and we moved thousands of people from welfare to work. And by the time I left, we were named the friendliest state in the country. We were named the most patriotic state in the country and we were named the number two state in the country people were moving to. And then I got the call to go to the United Nations. And my honest answer was, I don’t even know what the UN does. I just know everybody hates it. I was right. But when you get the chance to serve your country, you jump. And so, when I got to the UN, I wanted countries to know what America was for and what America was against.

(07:03)
I didn’t care if they didn’t like me, but I wanted them to respect America. And we got to work. We pulled ourselves out of the Iran deal. I negotiated with China and Russia to pass the largest set of sanctions against the country and a generation against North Korea. And the ballistic missile testing stopped. We acknowledged the truth and moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. But the biggest thing that we did, we took the kick me sign off of our backs and America was respected again at the United Nations. Now I’m running for president and I don’t need to tell you how bad things are. You don’t have to turn on the news to see it.

(07:53)
You feel it when you go to the grocery store. Groceries and our electricity is up 25% since pre-COVID. You feel it when you go fill up your car with gas. We feel it in our mortgage payments, in our rent. Everything is more expensive on the things that we have to have. And I would love to be able to tell you that Biden did that to us. But I have always spoken hard truths and I’m going to do that with you tonight. As much as Biden sent us down this rollercoaster of socialism, which is dangerous and we have to stop, our Republicans did that to us too. You look at that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill that they passed with no accountability, that expanded welfare that has now left us with 100 million Americans on Medicaid, 42 million Americans on food stamps. That’s a third of our country.

(08:56)
And did Republicans try and make it right? No. They opened up pet projects and earmarks for the first time in 10 years, pushing through 7,000 of them last December. Want to know how they spent your money? $30 million on an honor’s college in Vermont. 10 million to tear down a hotel in Alaska. Seven and a half million on a courthouse in Colorado. And the list goes on. In the 2024 appropriations budget, Republicans put in $7.4 billion worth of pet projects and earmarks. Democrats put in 2.8 billion. 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. Social security will go bankrupt in 10 years. Medicare will go bankrupt in eight. Then you look at our education system and everybody wants to blame COVID for education.

(10:09)
We had problems with education before COVID. Do you know right now in America, only 29% of eighth graders in our country are proficient in reading? 29%. Only 26% of American kids, eighth graders are proficient in math. If we don’t do something quick, we’re going to be in a world of hurt 10 years from now. Then you go and you look at the border. I have truly run out of things to say about how irresponsible it is at the border. It is a total dereliction of duty. And why nothing has been done up until now is beyond careless, because America is acting like it’s September 10th and we better remember what September 12th felt like. It only takes one. And I’ve been to the border. And I didn’t pull a comma, go and come back. I went 400 miles down that border. You’re not ready for what I saw.

(11:17)
Mounds of clothes, mounds of shoes, paraphernalia, rape areas that the women and girls had to go through. When you get up in the morning, you get your coffee and you watch the news. When these ranchers get up in the morning, they get their coffee and they go see if anyone died crossing the fence. They pick up whatever little kids are left behind them, they turn them over to border patrol. I met with multiple sheriffs. They said before 7:00 AM they round up whatever illegal immigrants they can find. They turn them over to border patrol. Border patrol documents them and releases them until their court date years from now. And when I asked border patrol about their jobs, they said, ” You want to know what we do? We’re glorified babysitters. They don’t let us do our job.”

(12:05)
7 million illegal immigrants have crossed that southern border. You feel it because over 200,000 have crossed the northern border. We’ve had enough fentanyl cross the border that would kill every single American last year. 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. And then my parents always told us, “You take care of those who take care of you.” This one’s personal. I’m going to ask you if we’ve taken care of those who take care of us. Did you know right now in America, 33,000 of our veterans are homeless, that we know of? One in three veterans suffers from PTSD or thoughts of suicide. We lose 22 heroes a day to suicide.

(13:15)
If a veteran needs a doctor’s appointment, on average takes them 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 is shameful how we treat our veterans. That’s a lot of bad, right? It’s hard to find anything good. And any one of those things could have been done by Congress. Certainly could have been done by Joe Biden. But what has Congress done for you lately? Nothing. Don’t you think it’s finally time we have term limits in this country? I think we need to have mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75. And I feel like we just need to change that policy, because Fetterman just changed all of that. I think we need to have mental competency tests for everyone that’s in DC, honestly.

(14:37)
I’m not being disrespectful when I say that. We all know 75 year olds that can run circles around us, and then there’s Joe Biden. But the truth of it behind why I’m saying that is the Senate has become the most privileged nursing home in the country. It’s true. And these are people we need to know they’re at the top of their game. They’re making decisions on our national security. They’re making decisions on the future of our economy. This isn’t anything to play with. We need to know we’ve got the right people there doing their job that protects us. But now I’m going to tell you what I told South Carolinians when I became governor. No more whining, no more complaining, now we get to work. What do we do when it comes to the economy? We start by clawing back the $500 billion worth of unspent COVID dollars that are still out there.

(15:48)
Instead of the 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. If 8% of our budget is interest, quit borrowing. Cut up the credit cards. You have to balance a budget every day. I had to balance a budget as governor. Why is Congress the only group that refuses to balance a budget? We will stop the spending, we’ll stop the borrowing, we’ll eliminate the 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 need to focus on the middle class. We are watching in America the richer getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We’ve got to focus on the middle class. That’s why we are going to eliminate the federal gas and diesel tax in this country.

(16:52)
The second thing we’re going to do is we’re going to cut taxes on middle America and simplify those brackets. We’re going to make the small business tax cuts permanent. They made corporate tax cuts permanent, but they made small business tax cuts temporary. We need to make those permanent so that we can really start getting our economy going again. That’s the focus that we need to have. And then there were two things at the United Nations that Russia, China and Iran never wanted us to have. They never wanted us to have a strong military and they never wanted us to be energy independent. We won’t just be energy independent. We will be energy dominant. Right now, the EPA cares more about sagebrush lizards than they do about whether we can afford our electricity bill.

(17:50)
We need to make sure that we are speeding up the pipeline process. We need to get the bureaucracy and the regs out of the way. We need to be exporting as much liquified natural gas as we can and make it an economic boom. That will build the coffers in our economy as well. And when we do that, that’s when we’ll start to be economically smart. And that’s the key. We have to be smart right now with the way we’re going. We’re going to be paying more in interest payments in a couple of years than our defense budget. And when that happens, you weaken the dollar and you also stop being a superpower.

(18:32)
We can’t let that happen. When it comes to education in South Carolina, we knew if a child couldn’t read by third grade, they were four times less likely to graduate high school. So, we started holding our kids back. We brought in their parents. We did reading remediation programs and we set them up for success. We have got to quit pushing these kids ahead if they can’t read. We need to do that all over the country and make sure our kids can read by the third grade.

If we don’t get these kids reading, we will be in a world of hurt. The second thing is no parent should ever wonder what’s being said or taught to their child in the classroom. We need complete transparency in the classroom.

(19:18)
As parents, we have one job and that’s to make sure we get our kids right. And that is why every parent should be able to choose which school their child goes to, you know best what they need. Every child deserves a good education, regardless of where they’re born and raised. We have to stop educating kids based on a zip code. And then let’s build things in America again, let’s put vocational classes back into our high schools. In South Carolina, we had apprenticeships all over our state. We taught our kids how to build the things we were making. That way you get them invested in our economy before they finish and you keep them in your state because of it. Now, when it comes to the border, that one’s a doozy, but it’s got to be handled immediately. The way that we will do that is first of all, we have to acknowledge the fact that what I did in South Carolina, we’re going to do it nationally. We will do a national E- Verify program and require every business to prove that the people they hire in their business are here legally. The second thing is we are going to finally defund sanctuary cities once and for all.

(20:41)
It will solve a whole lot more problems than just being a safe haven for illegal immigrants. It will take care of stolen guns, drugs, you name it. We’ve got to get that and bring law and order back to our cities. And then let’s make sure we’ll put 25,000 border patrol and ICE agents on the ground and let them do their job.

(21:13)
We will go back to the Remain in Mexico policy because no one should even step foot in the United States to start with. They have to process from Mexico. And instead of catch and release, we will go to catch and deport. That is what is going to close off our border once and for all.

(21:38)
Biden just gave temporary status to half a million Venezuelans. I can tell you from my time at the United Nations, you know what happened after that? Every one of those Venezuelans called their family members and told them they got temporary status. That’s half a million Social Security Numbers, that’s half a million driver’s licenses. We can’t keep incentivizing those to skip the line that legal immigrants are in to be able to do that.

(22:10)
So that’s the border. Now, what are we going to do about those that we owe the biggest debt of gratitude? What are we going to do about our veterans? The press shows you the tears that are shed when our loved ones deploy. And then we see the tears we cry when our loved ones come back home to us safe and it is a blessed day. I’m the wife of a combat veteran, he deployed in Afghanistan, the day he came back home to us was an answered prayer. But that was the easy part. When we got home, that’s when things really 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, you’ve got to love them when they come back home too.

(23:22)
That means we have to do better in the transition. We’ve got to make sure that we have telehealth, have the mental health care they need, right when they need it. Let’s make sure they can go to the doctor or hospital of their choice, they’ve earned that right. And the one way I think we’ll take care of veterans healthcare is I think every member of Congress should have to get their healthcare from the VA and you watch how fast that gets fixed.

(23:45)
It’ll be the best healthcare you’ve ever seen, I promise you. We will make sure we take good care of our veterans. So we have the answers on the domestic side. We know what we need to do to get back on track. Now, let’s talk about national security. Did you ever think we’d look at the sky and see a Chinese spy balloon going over our country? The world is literally on fire. You’ve got a war in Europe, you’ve got a war in the Middle East, you’ve got North Korea testing ballistic missiles, you’ve got China on the march, but make no mistake, none of that would’ve happened had we not had that debacle in Afghanistan. The idea that my husband 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 stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decades because we asked them to be there.

(25:07)
Think about what that told our friends. More importantly, think about what that said to our enemies. America has to get this right. And so now you have DC saying, “Do we support Ukraine or do we support Israel? Do we support Israel or do we support closing the border and border security?” Don’t let them lie to you like that. Don’t let them tell you that because that is a false premise. Let’s take it one by one. Let’s start with Ukraine. You should know, I had no better friend at the United Nations than Ukraine. They voted with us on absolutely everything. I could have a press conference, they’d show up without me even asking. But look at what happened. You had this thug invade a pro-American, freedom-loving country. Half a million people have died because of Putin over this.

(26:15)
And what happened? They’re fighting for their survival. Dictators always tell us what they’re going to do. They’re actually very transparent. Think about it. Hamas told us they were going to do that in Israel. China told us they were going to invade Hong Kong. They did. Russia said they were going to invade Ukraine. We watched it. China says, Taiwan is next. We better believe them. Russia has said, after Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. Those are NATO countries, that puts us at war. We are trying to prevent war. It’s always about prevention. That’s the key. That’s what you do to national security is how do you prevent war?

(27:07)
So if Ukraine wins, Russia stops and this war would end today. If Russia left today, the war would be over. If Ukraine stops fighting, they lose their country. That’s what’s happening. And I will first tell you, I don’t believe we should ever give cash to any country.

(27:32)
I don’t think we need to put troops on the ground in Ukraine. They’re too proud anyway, they don’t want any military help on that. But we need to give them the equipment and the ammunition to win. If Biden had done this in the beginning, first of all, if he had done prevention in the beginning, we wouldn’t have had a war. But if Biden had given them the equipment, ammunition they asked for in the beginning, this war would be over.

(28:09)
Ukraine has a stellar military force. They have now basically gotten rid of 50% of Russia’s defense forces. They’ve eliminated 50% of their forces. Russia’s now in a draft, the draft age now has been raised to 65 in Russia. We know they’ve hit rock bottom because they’re getting drones from Iran and missiles from North Korea. If we support Ukraine with equipment and ammunition, that is only 3% of our defense budget, 3.5% to be exact. The Europeans are giving more money than we are and they should, it’s their neighborhood.

(28:59)
Now, let’s go to what happened on October 7th. I’m truly haunted by what happened on October 7th. And the reason that I am, is because I gave a speech to the entire world at the United Nations five years ago and in that speech I said, “We know there are maps and these maps are held by Hamas. And it says, if they can get through that barrier, this is how they kill as many Jews as fast as they can before people show up.” And it happened. There are a few times in history where we need to make sure that America has moral clarity. There’s never been a time more important than this. An American president has to know the difference between good and evil, has to know the difference between right and wrong. We should be doing three things with Israel. One, give them whatever they need whenever they need it, no questions asked. They are a bright spot in a tough neighborhood. Secondly, eliminate Hamas. Finish them. It’s not enough to weaken them because they will do this again. And thirdly, do whatever it takes to get our hostages home. Other candidates will tell you, “This is Israel’s war.” This is personal, 33 Americans were butchered on October 7th. There are American hostages right now. This is personal to us. We have to get that right. So when it comes to Israel, remember they’re the tip of the spear when it comes to fighting terrorism. Because when they beheaded those people, beheaded those Israelis, burned those babies alive and raped those girls at that concert, they took their naked bodies and dragged them through the streets of Gaza and what did they say? “Death to Israel. Death to America.” It is never been that Israel needs America. It’s always been that America needs Israel. Because they’re the tip of the spear when it comes to defeating terrorism and they’re a bright spot in a tough neighborhood.

(31:37)
Now for us to go and support Ukraine and Israel with the equipment and ammunition they’re requesting, that’s 5% of our defense budget. That’s it. 5% of our defense budget. When they say, but what about those in the border? We should absolutely secure the border immediately. That’s American National Security. So if we were to do Israel, Ukraine and securing the border, that’s less than 20% of Biden’s green subsidies that he passed. So don’t tell me it’s not about money, it’s about priorities. And there is nothing more important than keeping Americans safe and American National Security. Government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people, it was never meant to be all things to all people. That’s priority number one. We have to make sure that we do that and we do it well. Then let’s talk about the biggest national security threat we face, China. China has been planning war with us for years and that’s not me exaggerating. They’re already here. They’ve infiltrated. Look at what’s happened. They bought 400,000 acres of U.S. soil, most recently near Grand Forks Air Force Base where our most sensitive drone technology is. They’ve spent millions of dollars into our universities, stealing our research, spreading Chinese propaganda. We’ve had more Americans die of fentanyl than the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam Wars combined. We lost 75,000 Americans to fentanyl last year. There are certain technologies that we never want China to get because it strengthens their military and it threatens America. Yet the Biden administration approved 70% of those requests last year.

(33:52)
And then when it comes to, well, we all freaked out about the Chinese spy balloon. What about the fact that 90% of our law enforcement drones in this country are Chinese? So think of all of the many surveillance that’s happening as we speak. And China has built up their military at a scary pace. They now have 500 nuclear warheads, that’s 100 more than they had last year. They have the largest naval fleet in the world. They have 370 ships, they’ll have 400 ships in two years. We won’t even have 350 ships in two decades. They’re doing artificial intelligence, they’re doing space, they’re doing cyber, they’ve developed hypersonic missiles. We’ve barely gotten started.

(34:42)
And now China’s the leading developer of NeuroStrike weapons. Weapons engineered to change the brain activity of military commanders and segments of the population. That’s who we’re dealing with. So when Biden and Yellen want to tell you that China’s a competitor, every day I dealt with China to the United Nations, they never saw us as a competitor, they always saw us as an enemy. We’ve got to look at them the way they see us and be smart. So how do we deal with China? The first thing you do is you stop selling any U.S. soil to them and we take back the land they’ve already purchased.

(35:22)
The second thing is we need to get all of this foreign intrusion out of our universities. It’s not just Chinese money, by the way, there’s Arab money in there, and you look at the pro-Hamas rallies. We go to universities and we say, “You either take foreign money or you take American money, but the days of taking both are over.” And we will get that infiltration out of our universities. We will blacklist all technology that strengthens China and hurts America. And we will go to China and say, “We’re going to end all normal trade relations with you until you stop murdering Americans with fentanyl.” You watch how fast they fix that because they need our economy.

(36:10)
And when it comes to our military, remember, strong militaries don’t start wars, strong militaries prevent wars. But in order to be strong, that doesn’t mean throwing a bunch of money at the Department of Defense. It means cleaning up the Department of Defense, getting rid of the bureaucracy, getting rid of the red tape, getting rid of all these programs that they have. We have to be focused on the future. The past wars were land, air and sea. Future threats are going to also be artificial intelligence, space and cyber. We’ve got to focus on modernizing our military, making sure that our men and women have what they need to deal with the threats in the future. And for God’s sake, we have got to stop these gender pronoun classes that are happening in the military. It’s demoralizing to our men and women. They have a job to do, they don’t need all this extra stuff.

(37:17)
So we know what we need to do to get our country back on track. We know what we need to do to make sure that we keep our country safe. But the one thing we need to deal with first, we have to end this national self-loathing that has taken over our country, the idea that they say America’s bad or rotten or racist. I was elected the first female minority governor in history. America’s not racist, we’re blessed. Our kids need to know to love

… of America. They need to be saying the Pledge of Allegiance when they start school every day.

(38:11)
Five months ago, I dropped my husband Michael off at 4:00 AM 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’d 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.

(39:00)
But in order to do that, we’ve got to acknowledge some hard truths. Republicans have lost the last seven out of eight popular votes for president. That is nothing to be proud of. We should want to win the majority of Americans. But the only way we’re going to do that is if we leave the negativity and the baggage behind and we go towards a new generational leader.

(39:23)
Another hard truth, I believe that President Trump was the right president at the right time. I was proud to serve America in his administration. I agreed with a lot of his policies. But the truth is, rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him. You know I’m right. Chaos follows him everywhere he goes. And with a country divided like we are and distracted, by the way, in a world that’s got threats pointed all at America, we can’t afford any of that chaos. We can’t be in chaos or we won’t survive it. Because let me tell you something, America has an amazing ability to self-correct. Sometimes we have to hit rock bottom to know where up is, and we’re there.

(40:36)
But we cannot survive a President Kamala Harris. I’m telling you, we can’t. A vote for Joe Biden is a vote for Kamala Harris. No matter how you look at it, that is what we’re looking at. And so, if you look at the national polls and you look at electability, you see that Trump is pretty much even with Biden. On a good day, he might be two points up. In every poll, we beat Biden by 10 to 13 points.

(41:18)
So, this isn’t just about the presidency, this is about governorships up and down. This is about house seats. This is about Senate seats. This is about truly riding the ship to get us back to where we need to be. We can do this. I know we can. But in order to do it, it’s going to take a lot of courage. 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 play in this primary. It matters.

(41:57)
When I announced, they asked me why I was running, 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 my husband Michael and his military brothers and sisters, because they need to know their sacrifice matters, that we do 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. 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 America.

(42:45)
And for the first time, 81% of Americans don’t think their kids are going to live as good of a life as we have. We can’t be okay with that. I’m not okay with that. We do have a country to save. But I’ll tell you this, if you will join with me in this fight, I promise you that our best days are yet to come. God bless you. Thank you, Derry. We appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. God bless you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank y’all so much. Appreciate y’all coming out. Thank you. Thank you.

(43:19)
All right, y’all have been so nice to listen to me. Now, we’re going to turn the microphones on you. I’ve got how many people, Andrew? Two? I’ve got two guys with microphones. So, there is nothing I won’t answer. You may not like my answer, but there is nothing I won’t answer. So, just raise your hand up high and one of the guys will come find you.

So, it’s my second time coming out to see Ambassador Haley. And one of the things that really struck me was that you are very strong, but you also don’t shy away from nuance. So, I have kind of a nuanced question for you.

Sure.

You supported leaving the Paris Agreement under President Trump’s tenure, but a lot has changed since then. The U.S. is now back in the Paris Agreement, but also for the very first time, China’s emissions are going to be decreasing next year, and it’s possible that 2023 is the highest year on record for their polluting emissions. And so, knowing that, what would you do as president to hold China accountable to continuing to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions? And what would you do to make sure that the U.S. leads the world in clean energy?

Great question. So, without knowing where any of you stand party wise or otherwise, I know that every person in this room wants us to have clean air, every person in this room wants us to have clean water, every person in this room wants to know that we are leaving our children a world that’s going to be there for them. I believe that climate change is real. I always have. I believe climate change is real.

(45:40)
Having said that, the reason that I fought to pull us out of the Paris Climate Agreement is because when that came together and all those countries came in the name of protecting our environment, Obama put us under the strictest of regulations that hurt our businesses, that hurt our families, and that was not realistic.

(46:05)
And you know what China’s plan was? They would deal with it in 10 years. I’ve dealt with China, 10 years never comes. Now, they can tell you everything they want on the emissions. If that were true, then why are they constantly still building coal plants? Because they’re doing that right now as we speak. If we truly care about the environment, the way you deal with that is you require China and India to step up and start reducing their emissions and prove it. Prove it. Because China will say a lot, but every time they speak they lie, and they’ve never fallen through on anything.

(46:44)
And you look at what America does, our American businesses don’t need to be mandated to be green. When I was governor, companies came into our state, they automatically wanted to be as green as possible because they’re good stewards of the environment. You look now, Boeing just flew a plane where the emissions are way down. They’re doing it off of cooking oil. I don’t even know how you do that, but they are doing it off… But the point is, these companies are constantly looking for ways to do it.

(47:15)
So, the way that we will hold China and India accountable is you don’t go and get into a pact at the UN, which is a farce every time. Instead, you go and you get with these other countries and you tell them, “You have to prove to us not what you’re going to do, but you have to actually prove it in actions. We have to see it before we believe it.” And there has to be a price that they pay for doing this. That’s the way you deal with it. You don’t go and put weight on America, you put weight on these guys that refuse to do anything about it. That’s how we’ll deal with it.

About 10 years ago, I was in Israel and I spoke to a number of Arabs and I asked, “Why do you live in Israel if you hate the Jews?” And the answer was, “We don’t hate the Jews. Living conditions in Israel are a lot better than they are in the Arab countries.” But the question is, with Hamas teaching people to hate Jews and teaching their five-year-olds how to use guns and hate Jews, is a two-state solution possible?

Interesting, because I’ve noticed that on the news, that’s what everybody wants to talk about, is a two-state solution. Every day that I was at the United Nations, Israel was a focus, every day. And I’ve seen this game before, even with what happened on October 7th. They all support Israel when she’s hit and they all beat her up when she hits back. They think she’s just supposed to keep taking it.

(49:04)
And the reality is they are always, and I’m upset because Biden is constantly pushing things on Israel. Why are you putting conditions on our friends? You’re supposed to be putting conditions on the terrorists, but yet you’re working and giving pressure to our friends. I can tell you right now, I’m incredibly worried about the ceasefire because every time we’ve had a ceasefire with Hamas, people die. They break the ceasefire, they kill Israeli soldiers, they take more hostages. I don’t trust Hamas. They’ve never given us a reason to trust Hamas.

(49:40)
When you look now and they talk about a two-state solution. Every day that I was at the United Nations, it was never Israel opposing a two-state solution. It was always the Palestinians and Iran opposing a two-state solution. They never wanted that because they want to eliminate Israel altogether. So, a two-state solution is not a true conversation because if you’ve ever talked to them, they don’t want it. The Palestinians don’t want a two-state solution.

(50:11)
So, what my thought is, and what I fought for, first of all, you’re right about what they teach the five-year-olds. There’s a organization called UNRWA and it’s a Palestinian aid organization to help the Palestinians. I went there to really see what it does, in good faith, to see what good does this do.

(50:37)
And what I found when I went into those areas, it was graffiti everywhere that said, “Kill the Jews and images of that.” The second thing is, of this organization, they had textbooks. And the textbooks, this is to simplify it, but basically said, “If you have five Israeli soldiers and you kill four Israeli soldiers, how many Israeli soldiers are left?” So, I pushed and we stopped giving any U.S. tax dollars to that Palestinian organization. And I had to fight the State Department bureaucracy to do that.

(51:16)
What I think Israel should do and what I think America should do, we should support whatever Israel thinks will keep them safe. No country deserves to have terrorists across their border. They don’t want Gaza. Israel doesn’t want Gaza, but they don’t want terrorists living off their border and allowing this to happen again. So whatever Israel says they feel like will keep them safe, I will support. The Palestinians are a totally different story.

(51:50)
Yes, ma’am?

So, ever since the early 1800s, Americans have had a strong economic identity at home and in the global marketplace. But in the past few decades, this kind of changed. And very recently we lost our AAA credit rating as a country. Many Americans believe we’ve lost our economic identity and are standing as an economic superpower. I’m wondering how your administration will restore our faith and standing as a top economic player in the global marketplace.

The key is the strong dollar is a national security issue. I mean, right now, what makes us a strong power is that we have a strong dollar. So, the reason when I said, “We’ve got to stop the spending, stop the borrowing, eliminate the earmarks,” is because if we get to the point where our interest debt is more than the defense budget, who’s going to fear us? No one’s going to fear us and one of our adversaries will grow stronger.

(52:47)
You see right now, China’s trying to get other countries to move away from the dollar. Why? Because the sanctions won’t matter as much if we do that. We have to focus, and the only way to do that is we’re going to have to make some tough decisions. But it can be done.

(53:04)
You look at D.C., one of the main things I will do, and it’s not what I say, it’s what I’ve done, I did this as governor, one of the main things I will do is when I became governor, I replaced the head of every agency. Whether it was being run well or not, I replaced the head to make sure that we freshened it up. The second thing that I will do is governors typically only meet with the president once a year. I will meet with our governors every quarter, Republican and Democrat, with the goal of taking as many federal programs as we can and sending them down to the states. That will reduce the size of the federal government and it will empower people in the states.

(53:46)
So, think welfare, think healthcare, think education. If we turned around and gave that to the states, you’re cutting out all that bureaucracy of the federal government and you’re putting that money in our coffers, where we can have it, or sending it to the states where it means something. That’s our tax dollars. Do you know right now 75% of federal employees are still working from home, in D.C.? Do you know 70% of office space at our agencies is sitting empty? That’s our taxpayer dollars. Why are we paying for that? There’s so much you can do.

(54:28)
The rest of the things I did with our agencies is once I replaced the head, I sent people into every agency to clean it up. Pull down all regs, pull down bureaucracy, get them mission focused again, get rid of problem children.

(54:41)
And then, I started giving them 90 day benchmarks they had to hit, which zoned in on their mission. In those 90 day benchmarks, they had to prove to the taxpayers a return on investment. And then we saw that they were spending because they were worried they wouldn’t get the same amount of money the next year in the budget. So, what we did was we put all that spending online for every taxpayer to see, and then I incentivized those agencies to give money back to the taxpayers. And magic happened, because then they started to compete to see who could be the most efficient and effective agency. We have to do that in D.C.

(55:28)
Yes, sir?

I’m an independent, but I was questioning what you said before about growing the federal tax base by reducing taxes, but the fact is that the deficit is growing faster than the economy can grow. Even if you have a 5% growth, that’s like we haven’t had for years, really, on a sustained basis. So, if you reduce taxes, how are you going to find the money really to fund all these programs?

(56:03)
And that also gets into the question, would you raise taxes on the wealthy? Because I haven’t heard you anything… In any of the debates, I haven’t heard you say anything about that, as opposed to… You were just saying about middle class. So, how do you propose to actually fund these programs?

You should be so excited because one of the coolest thing that’s going to happen is when you send an accountant to D.C., all of a sudden the respect and value for a taxpayer dollar is going to matter. The first thing everybody says is, “Oh, but you can’t cut taxes, because then where is the money going to come from?” I just told you we had 70% of office space sitting empty. I just told you that we had 7,000 earmarks that were sent through. You want to know something else? Foreign aid.

(56:57)
I’m coming to your questions. When I was at

The United Nations and we moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We were literally condemned by the entire world. I was proud to issue the veto, because we can put our embassy wherever we want. We always put it in the capital of every country. Jerusalem isn’t the capital of Israel, we were acknowledging a truth, but I was mad. I went back to my office and I said, “I want you to put a book together. I want you to list all 193 countries. I want the second column to be the percentage of times they voted with the US and against the US, and I want the third column to be how much foreign aid we give them.” I took that book and I gave it to President Trump. He lost his mind. He’s yelling out countries, he’s flipping pages.

(57:46)
I said, “Look, I’m not saying we give foreign aid based on a percentage vote at the UN, but that should be one of the things we look at. Quit trying to buy friends. Quit paying off enemies.” Do you know last year we gave $50 billion in foreign aid. You know who we gave it to? Iraq that harbored terrorists that tried to kill our soldiers. Zimbabwe, the most anti-American African country there is. We gave money to Belarus who’s holding hands with Russia as they invade Ukraine. We gave money to Cuba who we named a state sponsor of terrorism, that is now putting a spy base up with China. The one that makes me sick to my stomach, we gave money to China. How weak do we look? When I’m president we will no longer give money to countries that hate America.

(58:36)
When you deal with your agencies first and you pull down a lot of that red tape and bureaucracy, when you send programs down to the states and you literally reduce the size of the federal government, when you stop with all of these other things that I’ve given you numbers of examples, and then you build your economy, that’s what it takes to get things going. Putting money back in people’s pockets, that’s good for the economy. That’s not bad for the economy, because we need our economy moving again. We’ve got to get it to where we can afford things. You can only do that by putting money back in people’s pockets.

(59:26)
So, yes, you can say, but we don’t have the money, but we do have the money. Then, yes, one other thing that no other candidate in this race wants to talk about, we have to do entitlement reform. We have to do it. The reason that we have to do it is for the other candidates who’ve all said they’re not going to do it. Does that mean you’re going to go in and be president and leave the country bankrupt when it comes to those? Because social security is going bankrupt in 10 years. Medicare’s going bankrupt in eight. How do we deal with it?

(01:00:01)
First of all, America should always be a country that keeps her promises. We don’t touch anyone who is in the system at all. You should know that that money’s going to be there for you. The ones we change it for are those like my kids in their twenties coming into the system. We change retirement age to reflect life expectancy for them. We limit benefits on the wealthy. Instead of cost of living increases, we do increases based on inflation and we expand Medicare Advantage plans, which seniors love that allow competition and reduce the cost of healthcare.

(01:00:41)
There are so many things we can do, but what we should never do is talk about charging the taxpayers more money. I refuse to do it. I will never do it.

(01:00:52)
[inaudible 01:01:05].

Could you elaborate on your plan for healthcare for all of us, for all … You spoke about veterans and all and they certainly need the best of care. We all need the best of care. Please speak on your healthcare plan.

Absolutely.

(01:01:23)
How is it that we are the best country in the world and we have the most expensive healthcare in the world? In order to fix healthcare, you have to do … I always say you have to break it, but that sounds harsh. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s true. We have to open up healthcare. The way you do that is you have to make it all transparent, from the insurance companies to the hospitals, to the doctor’s offices, to the pharmaceuticals, to the PBMs, and everything in between. They all have to show us their warts. They don’t get to hide anything anymore.

(01:02:03)
Once we see that, the focus should be how do we get the patient out of the backseat of the car? Michael and I take care of my parents. They live with us. They’re 87 and 89. When my mom was in the hospital, a nurse came in to give her Tylenol and my mom said, “I don’t need it. I’m fine.” She said, “Honey, you might as well take it, you’re going to pay for it, anyway.” When we got the bill from the hospital, no one talked to us about that bill. It was negotiated between the insurance company and the hospital. We’re supposed to trust that? There’s no way. If we just dealt with insurance companies alone, do you know we’d cut healthcare in half? In half.

(01:02:53)
We’ve got to get them to all own up. The first thing is we’re going to make it all transparent, we’re going to see all of their warts and I’m going to make sure you see them too. Then we’re going to take it on. The second thing is doctors don’t give you those 10 tests because they want to, they give it to you for the 90% chance they’ll get sued if they don’t. We have to have tort reform in this country so that that’s no longer an issue.

(01:03:24)
We passed tort reform in South Carolina. The second thing that we did is I eliminated certificate of need. For those of you that don’t know, certificate of need is something that most states have, and basically it stops competition. A hospital that’s here, no other hospital can come within X number of miles, because it hurts the hospital. In our family business that I grew up in, my mom used to always say the best thing that could ever happen to us is if our competition went across the street, because every day we’d fight to give good service to our customers and prices would stay down. They do this with hospitals, they do it with nursing homes, they do it with surgical centers, the only ones that win when you have a certificate of need are lawyers, and they make a ton of money off of it, when the hospitals fight each other.

(01:04:18)
We need to have competition in healthcare. That’s how we get the patient from the backseat to the driver’s seat. You deserve to know. Think about when you get your car fixed. You go to the mechanic and what does he do? He says, “Well, I can give you a temporary fix, it’s going to cost you this much money. Or I can give you the permanent fix and it’s going to cost this much money,” but you make the decision. You know the cost upfront. You decide whether you want that or not. That’s what has to happen with healthcare in America.

(01:04:50)
All the drugs that we’re getting, notice how many people … do you know people getting them from Canada? My parents do, because it’s incredibly cheap to get it from Canada and it’s too expensive here in America. Why are we doing that?

(01:05:04)
Another thing that I’ll tell you is we need to incentivize, one, because it’s a national security threat with China, but we need to incentivize medications happening here. Do you know there’s a company called US Antibiotics. They’re in Bristol, Tennessee. They make amoxicillin. All you moms know if your child has an ear infection it’s the number one antibiotic drug that we have. Do you know that our federal government doesn’t buy any amoxicillin from that American company? They buy it from China. Why in the world would we do that and how are we incentivizing any company to want to do more here in the States if we’re not supporting them?

(01:05:52)
There are many things that we could do with healthcare, but the first thing we’re going to do is open the whole thing up and make every part of that industry show us everything that they have. That’s how we’ll get the patient back in the driver’s seat.

We have time for one more question.

Make it a great one. Yes, we will go to Hannah after that.

Continuing with the China theme here, I recently read an article by Mike Gallagher about how TikTok is brainwashing our youth against our country and our allies. He pointed to a recent poll that showed that 51% of Americans, aged 18 to 24, believe Hamas was justified in its brutal terrorist attacks on innocent Israeli citizens on October 7th. What he pointed out in that article is that tic-tac algorithms are tuned to prioritize polarizing outrage and addictive brain numbing nonsense. That is quoting him. China understands, clearly, that the crumbling of a regime always starts in the realm of ideas. What I’d like to know is what your thought is about the best way to fight this information warfare or the smokeless battlefield.

Acknowledge that it exists. I have said from the very beginning, we have got to ban TikTok in America. It’s ridiculous that we’re …

(01:07:20)
This is a Chinese infiltrated social media app. What Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea have done, they’ve done this for years, they learned the cheapest form of warfare was to use social media to divide our country. They don’t just do it with us, they do it with the Europeans too. If you look at everything that’s happening in Europe, they do the exact same thing. There is a reason India banned TikTok. There is a reason that you’ve seen Nepal last week banned TikTok, because they see social disruption happening in their countries.

(01:07:58)
Let’s talk about social media as a whole, because it’s a real problem. When social media came about, these heads of companies went and said, “We want to support freedom of speech, but we don’t want to be held liable for anything someone says.” Fair, right? If you’re going to have freedom of speech. The problem is somewhere along the way, those companies decided what they thought was free speech and what they didn’t, so that Section 230 that Congress passed should no longer apply to them.

(01:08:34)
The one thing we need to do with our social media, they need to show all Americans what their algorithms are, because once we see the algorithms, we will know why they push what they push. If you look on Facebook, when everything happened with Israel and Ukraine, the Russian influence went up 400% on pro Hamas things. You look at TikTok, what did they do? They put up Bin Laden’s speech that he wrote the week after 911, and you’ve got young people saying, “Oh, that’s why he did it.” That’s disgusting. It’s insulting. That, alone, should be reason to ban TikTok.

(01:09:19)
Guess who’s winning? China’s winning. Russia’s winning. They love how distracted we are. They love how much we’re fighting each other, because it makes us weak when we’re divided. One, they should have to show us their algorithms. Two, these social media companies need to be able to verify there are real people behind these accounts. Right now there are foreign bots, these aren’t even real people, that are constantly spreading misinformation and in a time where our kids are not getting their news from TV. We need to make sure we’re doing everything we can. We want free speech for Americans. I don’t want free speech for Russia and Hamas, and that’s what’s happening right now. We’ve got to get that foreign intrusion out of our social media. When we do those two things, you’re actually helping national security because that’s how we’re getting all of this foreign intrusion that’s coming in. That’s the answer to the social media question.

(01:10:24)
Now I’ll take a point of personal privilege. Hannah attended my town hall last week, Hannah? Last week. She just wowed the crowd with what she had to say. Hannah, do you want to finish us off? It better be a good question.

All right. All right. I’ll give one to you. Since we last met, I have had a chance to go to two other rallies with Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. DeSantis. I was wondering if you could give me at least three reasons why you think and some others, Haley supporters, think that you should be elected president over them.

It’s a great question.

(01:11:17)
First thing, I’ve been a governor. I know what bureaucracy is, I know how to clean it up. I’ve run a state. I’ve worked with an economy that was in shambles. I’ve not only just built the economy, we turned into an economic powerhouse in the process. We made our state proud again and we showed the country and the world what strength and grace looked like in our worst crisis moments in South Carolina, during my tenure.

(01:11:47)
Second reason, every day I was at the United Nations I dealt with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Israel, every one of those hotspots I dealt with. I dealt with them with strength. I dealt with them in a way that took the kick-me sign off our backs and I dealt with them in a way that they knew what America expected of them instead of us being reactionary.

(01:12:15)
The third reason is I’m a mom. The truth is, I don’t want my kids growing up like this. I don’t feel comfortable with the way the country is and just letting my kids have to deal with it. It’s not okay. It gives me real heartburn to think about the fact that they just came out with a statistic that the average homeowner age buying a home is 49. 49. It used to be something that when you started your life and your marriage and you worked hard, that was the … 49? I want to know that younger people can buy a home. I want to know they can afford their rent. I want to know that they’re going to get a job. I want to know that they’re going to live a better life than us, not a worse life than us. The biggest personal reason is that I’m a mom.

(01:13:13)
At the end of the day, I will treat America like I treated South Carolina, which was don’t mess with my state, or there will be hell to pay and that is the way I’ll deal with America. Thank you.

(01:13:40)
I will leave you with this. When I told you that I ran against that longest serving legislator in a primary, people laughed at me. I got to work and I earned their support and we won. When I ran for governor, I actually ran against a lieutenant governor, an attorney general, a very popular congressman and a state senator. I was Nikki Who, I had 3% in the polls, I had the least amount of money, but I worked South Carolina like no one else and we won. When I got to the United Nations, they said I didn’t have enough experience and I got to work and took the kick-me sign off of our backs.

(01:14:24)
I have been underestimated in everything I’ve ever done. It’s a blessing because it makes me scrappy. No one’s going to outwork me in this race. No one’s going to outsmart me in this race, because we have a country to save.

(01:14:42)
If you like what I had to say today, go tell 10 people, go tell them to volunteer, go tell them to sign up and register to vote. Go tell them to give 5, 10, $25 at nikkihaley.com. If you don’t like what I’ve had to say today [inaudible 01:14:58], just don’t say anything and don’t tell anyone you were here.

(01:15:03)
God bless you. Thank you so much.

You’re awesome. Well done.

Thank you. We’ll do pictures over in the …