Takeaways From Nikki Haley’s CNN Town Hall
It was very different from the Trump town hall.
Compared with CNN’s explosive, much-criticized town-hall-style event with Mr. Trump last month, this one was a throwback to earlier, less combative times. There was no torrent of fact-checking, no audience jeers whipped up from the stage and no forceful interrogation of the candidate. Jake Tapper, the anchor who moderated, never found the need to correct Ms. Haley.
Trump and DeSantis continue to be the focus.
The two big red elephants in the room, Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, were mostly mentioned indirectly, but those two Republican presidential contenders were present nonetheless. Ms. Haley repeated her position that in order to save Social Security and Medicare, it would be necessary to raise the retirement age for young workers and to limit benefits for the wealthy. Both Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, who once supported similar changes, now say they won’t touch the programs.
“I think it’s important to be honest with the American people,” Ms. Haley said. “We are in this situation. Don’t lie to them and say, ‘Oh, we don’t have to deal with entitlement reform.’ Yes, we do.”
Ms. Haley also criticized Mr. DeSantis for his attacks on Disney as a “woke” company. She had no beef with the Florida governor’s criticism of Disney’s opposition to what critics call his “Don’t Say Gay” law, and even said she would have gone further than that law to prevent talk of gender and sexuality in schools. But she called Mr. DeSantis “hypocritical” for accepting tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions from Disney before turning on the company, and for using taxpayer dollars to sue it. “Pick up the phone deal with it,” she said. “Settle it the way you should, and I just think he’s being hypocritical.”
Haley sought to find the sweet spot for Republicans on social issues.
On social issues including abortion, gun restrictions and transgender rights, which animate much of the Republican voting base, Ms. Haley toed a conservative line. She defended, for example, leading the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate accord while at the United Nations. (President Biden rejoined the accord in 2021.) But she displayed less of the punitive rhetoric on the issues that Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have made crucial to their messages.
Source: The New York Times
