Presidential candidate Nikki Haley, the new darling of the American right, came under fire Thursday for refusing to mention slavery when asked about the causes of the Civil War.
“Why did civil war break out in the United States?” one voter asked during an exchange Wednesday evening with the candidate for the 2024 election in New Hampshire.
“Well, that's an easy question,” the former American ambassador to the UN quipped on the subject of the 19th century conflict, before launching into a tirade about the American state's handling of individual freedoms at home.
“I find it crazy that you can answer this question in 2023 without mentioning slavery,” replies his interlocutor.
During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Southern Confederates declared their independence from the United States and fought to preserve slavery, which had been abolished in the rest of the country.
“What can I say about slavery?” the fifty-year-old replied, visibly defensive. Then to the crowd: “Next question.”
Nikki Haley received heavy criticism for this sequence, which was captured by television networks across the country.
“It was slavery,” President Joe Biden himself responded on X (formerly Twitter) to the question posed to the candidate.
“Nikki Haley has gotten herself into a huge mess of her own making,” scoffed a spokesman for the campaign team of Ron DeSantis, one of his rivals in the Republican primary, which also includes Donald Trump.
Asked about this scene Thursday morning, Nikki Haley tried to backtrack: “Of course the Civil War was linked to slavery, we all know that,” she told a local radio station.
However, several reiterated comments the candidate made when she was governor of South Carolina. Nikki Haley subsequently refused to change that state's Confederate flag, even though it was seen by many as a symbol of slavery and racism.
She changed her mind after a shooting by a white supremacist at a church in her state that killed nine African-American worshipers in 2015.