Liam Conner
One day after former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said he would vote to former President Donald Trump in November, Trump on Thursday addressed Haley’s comments after a rally in the Bronx – his first major campaign event in New York City since 2016.
“I think she will be on our team because we have a lot of the same ideas, the same thoughts,” Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told News 12 New York. “I appreciated what she said. You know, we had an unpleasant campaign, it was very unpleasant. But she’s a very capable person and I’m sure she’ll be on our team in some capacity, for sure.”
During an event Wednesday at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., its first since suspending his presidential campaign in March, Haley said she would “vote for Trump.”
Her statement came despite intense criticism of her former opponent during his presidential campaign, when she frequently referred to Trump as being “deranged.”
And in her speech announcing she was abandoning her presidential bid, Haley said that “it is now up to Donald Trump to win the votes of those in our party and outside it who do not support him.”
The former South Carolina governor served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration.
In a May 11 post on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that Haley is “not being considered” to be his vice presidential nominee. Trump, though on Thursday, appeared to sidestep the question when asked whether she was being considered as a potential running mate, instead listing the names of several other prominent Republicans who he said were doing a “fantastic job,” including Sens. Marco Rubio and JD Vance, Rep. Elise Stefanik and Dr.
“You could take people like Ben Carson, you could take people like Marco Rubio, JD Vance, I mean there’s so many. Elise is doing a fantastic job,” Trump said. “We have a lot of people who would do a really fantastic job.”
When asked for a timeline for a decision, Trump responded that it would likely occur “sometime during the convention.”
The Republican National Convention is scheduled for July 15-18 in Milwaukee.
Trump has spent the last few weeks in a Manhattan courtroom, participating His ongoing “silence” criminal trial. His defense closed the case on Tuesday, with closing arguments scheduled for next week.
– Kathryn Watson contributed to this report.
