Nikki Haley returns to the Carolinas. She might have hinted at her political future
When former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was looking for her first opportunity to speak in the Carolinas since leaving her post in the Trump administration, it wasn’t hard for her to decide where she wanted to go.
“This was not an unbiased choice for me,” Haley told members of the National Guard Association of South Carolina on Saturday at the association’s annual banquet.
Speeches like these are standard for figures like Haley, but the former S.C. governor has a personal connection to the Palmetto State’s National Guard.
Haley’s husband, Maj. Michael Haley, is an operations officer assigned to the S.C. National Guard’s Joint Force Headquarters. He served a tour of duty in Afghanistan during Haley’s term as governor from 2011 to 2017.
“I was once technically his commander-in-chief,” she joked, “but he never acknowledged it.”
In her speech to Guard members in Asheville, NC — her first in the Carolinas since she stepped down as President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations — Haley praised the Guard’s response during her time as governor to the 2015 floods and the battering of Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
She also noted the nation’s reliance on the National Guard since Sept. 11. At one point, half of U.S. personnel serving in Iraq were National Guardsmen, she said.
“Not bad for quote, ‘weekend warriors,’” she said.
But Haley, now considered a likely presidential candidate in 2024, didn’t just re-live her time as governor. She also highlighted how her time in the Trump administration heightened her foreign policy experience.
She told the Guard she gained a new perspective during her time at the U.N., taking tough stances on Russia, Iran and North Korea while earning a reputation as an interpreter for Trump to the world.
“For the last two years, I’ve been to places where life is cheap and liberty nonexistent,” Haley said.
She took aim at China for placing members of the country’s Uighur minority in re-education camps, where they are “not allowed to give their children traditional names, speak their language or practice their religion.”
“You and I have seen true evil,” she said.
In a candidate-like touch, she also tied the experience back to her own biography, noting she and her Indian-American family grew up in a “black and white world” in Bamberg in the 1970s.
“My father wore a turban and my mother wore a sari,” she said. “We were different.”
Nevertheless, the country allowed her father to teach at Voorhees College, her mother to open a business, and her to become a governor and ambassador. That’s the country that even America’s critics at the U.N. would privately tell her they admired, Haley said.
Saturday was not the first time Haley has highlighted her U.N. experience since leaving office. Earlier this month, Haley spoke of her support for Israel at the U.N. to the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, calling it “one of the easiest things I did at the U.N.”
Haley resigned as ambassador at the end of 2018, citing a need for some time off after nearly 14 years in public service dating to her time in the S.C. Legislature. She also now has a chance to explore private sector opportunities, since Haley left office with around $1 million in debt, according to federal income disclosures.
The former governor has since signed with the Washington Speakers Bureau for a reported fee of $200,000 per speech, according to CNBC, as well as the use of a private plane for travel to speaking venues.
That speaking fee would put Haley into the same range as what former presidents charge for making public speeches, as well as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and first lady Michelle Obama.
Haley said on Twitter she will not be receiving a speaking fee for her appearance at the National Guard convention. Haley last spoke in Charlotte, N.C., in November, when she received the Charlotte Chamber’s Citizen of the Carolinas award.
She also appeared in Columbia with husband Michael Haley last month for the inauguration of her Republican successor S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster.
This story was originally published February 23, 2019 at 9:33 PM.
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