The super PAC supporting Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley released an ad Wednesday hitting at Donald Trump for a “sick pattern” of rhetoric toward the military, following attacks by the former president on Haley’s husband, who is deployed in Africa.
The 30-second spot from SFA Fund Inc. features a clip of Trump mocking Michael Haley, who is serving a voluntary deployment in Djibouti with the South Carolina Army National Guard, and highlights disparaging comments Trump previously made about service members and veterans. It quotes reporting about Trump’s remarks, including him questioning “what was in it” for soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, and calling fallen soldiers “losers” and prisoners of war “suckers.”
“Donald Trump: Sick or clueless?” says the ad, which was shared first with The Washington Post.
The more than $2 million ad buy, which will air statewide in South Carolina, is the latest response by Haley and her allies to hit back at Trump for criticizing Michael Haley’s absence on the campaign trail. Since Trump’s initial remarks on Saturday, Haley has repeatedly attacked him for his comments and past treatment of veterans.
“Our service members, our veterans, and their families deserve a Commander-in-Chief who is not only proud of their service and sacrifice but is someone they can be proud of as well,” SFA Fund spokeswoman Preya Samsundar said in a statement. “Unfortunately Donald Trump has failed on both counts.”
“What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone?” Trump said at a rally in South Carolina on Saturday.
Haley responded to Trump’s remarks at her rally in Gilbert, S.C., later that night. “I’ll say this: Donald, if you have something to say, don’t say it behind my back. Get on a debate stage and say it to my face,” the former South Carolina governor said. “If you mock the service of a combat veteran, you don’t deserve a driver’s license, let alone being President of the United States.”
In the early hours Tuesday morning, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Haley’s rally size was “an embarrassment to her wonderful husband, in Africa. I think he should come back home to help save her dying campaign.”
Haley has continued to hammer Trump for his comments in interviews this week. “I mean every bit of it is disgusting. You know to sit there and mock my husband for not being with me on the presidential trail because he is deployed and serving our country,” she told Fox News on Monday morning. “The closest he’s come to harm’s way is a golf ball hitting him on a golf cart.”
Speaking on CNN later Monday afternoon, Haley said that Trump’s comments about veterans continue “to be a pattern of what he’s doing.”
“The idea that he thinks that you can talk about this so carelessly is a problem. Because if you don’t understand that it’s their shoulders we stand on, if you don’t understand that everybody knows someone who has either lost their life or served this country in a way that’s allowed us to keep our freedoms, that is not someone who deserves to be commander in chief,” she added.
South Carolina, where the next primary contest will take place on Feb. 24, has a large military population and is home to numerous military bases. Trump leads Haley 65 percent to 30 percent among likely GOP voters in the state, according to a new CBS News-YouGov survey. A Washington Post-Monmouth University poll from Feb. 1 showed Trump with 58 percent support among potential Republican primary voters, compared with Haley’s 32 percent.