Former President Donald Trump has started making a fictional claim about the political past of Nikki Haley, his remaining opponent for the Republican presidential nomination.
On social media last week and at a campaign rally last weekend in South Carolina, where Haley served as governor from 2011 to 2017, Trump claimed that Haley had been a supporter of Democratic President Barack Obama – and even that she had at least briefly supported Obama over his Republican opponent in the 2012 election, Mitt Romney.
In Trump’s social media post on Friday, he claimed that Haley was not only a “flunky” for Romney, a frequent critic of Trump who is now a US senator for Utah, but that “she was also a Barack Hussein Obama supporter as seen here,” pointing to a video clip from the 2012 campaign. At a rally the next day, Trump said Haley was not only a friend of Romney but that “she actually dropped Romney for a little while for Obama.”
Facts First: Trump’s claims that Haley had been an Obama supporter and that she had spent time supporting Obama over Romney are both false. Haley was a vehement Obama critic and a staunch Romney supporter, endorsing Romney for president against Obama before the first votes were cast in the 2012 Republican primary that Romney ended up winning. Haley was also an early Romney endorser in the 2008 Republican presidential primary he lost. There was no period in which she abandoned Romney in favor of Obama.
Haley, who was South Carolina’s Republican governor at the time of the 2012 campaign cycle, said in a December 2011 statement about her endorsement of Romney: “Neither South Carolina nor the nation can afford four more years of President Obama, and Mitt Romney is the right person to take him on and get America back on track.” She also said in the statement that “our country will need…
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