Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Thursday blamed a Democrat “plant” as the cause of an embarrassing exchange during a town hall in which she failed to mention slavery when asked about the causes of the Civil War.
The former South Carolina governor was roundly criticized for her answer at the event in New Hampshire on Wednesday in which she claimed the conflict was about “how government was going to run” and “the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
In an apparent effort to quell the backlash, Haley used a radio appearance Thursday morning to clarify her beliefs—and accuse the voter who asked her about the Civil War as being some kind of Democratic operative.
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“Of course the Civil War was about slavery—we know that, that’s the easy part of it,” Haley said during an interview with The Pulse of NH. “What I was saying was: ‘What does it mean to us today?’ What it means to us today is about freedom. That’s what that was all about.”
“It was about individual freedom,” she continued. “It was about economic freedom. It was about individual rights. Our goal is to make sure no, we never go back to the stain of slavery, but what’s the lesson in all of that?”
Haley also claimed that Democrats and the Biden campaign are planting questions at her events. “Biden and the Democrats keep sending Democrat plants to do things like this, to get the media to react,” Haley said, according to NH Journal. “We know when they’re there. We know what they’re doing.”
Speaking about the voter who asked her about the Civil War, Haley added: “It was definitely a Democrat plant. That’s why I said, ‘What does it mean to you?’ And if you notice, he didn’t answer anything. The same reason he didn’t tell the reporters what his name was.”
On Wednesday, Haley did ask the unnamed man what he believed the cause of the Civil War was, to which he answered: “I’m not running for president.” He later said: “In 2023, it’s astonishing to me that you would answer that question without mentioning the word ‘slavery.’”
According to NH Journal, the man later told reporters he’d asked the question to see if her views had changed since she discussed the Civil War while running for South Carolina governor in 2010. In an interview at the time with southern heritage activist organization Palmetto Patriots, Haley characterized the conflict as being about “tradition versus change,” elaborating that the “change” concerned “individual rights and liberty of people.”
Haley’s failure to mention slavery on Wednesday quickly drew condemnation from across the political spectrum. Sharing a video of Haley’s answer, President Joe Biden wrote on X: “It was about slavery.”
The campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shared the clip along with the comment “Yikes,” while another of Haley’s GOP nomination rivals, Vivek Ramaswamy, wrote: “I think she mistook him for a Super PAC donor.”
