Former Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie slammed former Republican South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for failing to mention slavery in her response to a question about the cause of the Civil War.
Christie, while speaking at a town hall in New Hampshire on Thursday, said he doesn’t believe Haley is racist, but her answer signals a characteristic that he said could be even worse.
NIKKI HALEY CIVIL WAR FLAP EVOKES MEMORIES OF JOHN MCCAIN CONFEDERATE FLAG CONTROVERSY
“She didn’t say what she said last night and today about this because she’s dumb. She’s not, she’s smart, and she knows better. And she didn’t say it because she’s a racist, because she’s not. I know her well, and I don’t believe Nikki has a racist bone in her body,” Christie said. “But for purposes, this race, the reason she did it, is just as bad, if not worse, and should make everybody concerned about her candidacy.”
“She did it because she’s unwilling to offend anyone by telling the truth, and so she isn’t willing to say the same things about abortion in New Hampshire that she says in Iowa because she doesn’t want to offend people in Iowa who have a different feeling than people in New Hampshire. But then she comes to New Hampshire; she doesn’t want to offend them either. And she’s unwilling to tell the truth about Donald Trump. She says he was the right president for the right time,” he added.
The former New Jersey governor also said the question of what caused the Civil War was not difficult for him to answer.
“If someone asked me what the cause of the Civil War was, it’s easy. It’s slavery,” he said.
Haley, who is polling in second place behind former President Donald Trump in several of the early primary states, was asked what the cause of the Civil War was at an event in the Granite State on Wednesday. She offered an answer that did not mention slavery.
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“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run,” she said. “The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
On Thursday, while speaking on a radio show in New Hampshire, Haley clarified that “of course” the Civil War was about slavery and claimed that was the “easy part of it.” The flub was widely viewed as a speed bump to Haley’s previous momentum heading into the first GOP primaries in January.
