The hits keep coming in the competitive race between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis to be the leading alternative to Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican presidential race.
During a Fox News interview Wednesday, the former South Carolina Governor claimed DeSantis’ digs at her endorsement this week from Americans for Prosperity and her campaign in general were a measure of how the race was going for the current Florida chief executive.
“I think that’s what a candidate says when they’re losing,” Haley said on “America’s Newsroom.”
Her comments come less than 24 hours after DeSantis yoked the Koch Network and Haley as two sides of the same establishment coin.
“I think that their network has taken certain positions that are conservative. Some that are not,” DeSantis said during an interview on Newsmax, where Eric Bolling asked about the “Koch Brothers” backing Haley.
DeSantis argued that Americans for Prosperity “supported open borders” and that “Nikki is … very weak on immigration,” and so “that gives her some synergy with that group” which sees “somebody that’s going to be more aligned with establishment interests.”
The Governor’s statement comports with that from his campaign earlier Tuesday.
“Like clockwork, the pro-open borders, pro-jail break bill establishment is lining up behind a moderate who has no mathematical pathway of defeating the former President,” read a prepared statement from DeSantis’ Communications Director Andrew Romeo.
Haley said Wednesday “there’s nothing establishment about a candidate who was the Tea Party candidate who ran for Governor. There’s nothing establishment when you have Americans for Prosperity, the most conservative grassroots organization in the country, come out and endorse me because they like my economic plans and my plans for the future of America.”
Haley reiterated her depiction of a DeSantis campaign in decline and a desperate candidate to match, contending “he’s saying what he has to say because he’s grasping at this point.”
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