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      Nikki Haley Again Calls for a TikTok Ban Over Privacy Concerns

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      The Republican Party might have challenges with outreach to Generation Z, but Nikki Haley, appearing in a Fox News town hall event on Sunday, said the answer was not TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform.In a conversation with the “America Reports” co-anchor John Roberts, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador, criticized President Biden for posting a TikTok clip on the night of the Super Bowl, in an appeal to younger voters. She also hit former President Donald J. Trump, her G.O.P. primary rival, for failing to curtail its use while he was in the White House.“President Trump said he would ban TikTok, and when President Xi asked him not to, that fell to the wayside,” she said, referring to Xi Jinping, China’s leader. “We should have banned it from the beginning. It is incredibly dangerous.”The volleys against both men are part of a broader argument Ms. Haley has been making in recent media appearances and on the campaign trail that it is time for fresh leadership. Her attacks on Mr. Trump, whom she served under as ambassador, have become sharper in particular, as the two head into a primary showdown in South Carolina on Saturday.In the town hall event on Sunday, as she has before, Ms. Haley broke with the isolationist wing of her party on foreign policy and pummeled the former president for his friendly relationship with authoritarian leaders like Mr. Jinping and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. She argued that Mr. Putin “knows exactly what he did” with Aleksei A. Navalny, the outspoken Russian opposition leader who died last week in prison, and chastised Mr. Trump for suggesting he would encourage Russian aggression against U.S. allies in Europe.“I think that’s why it’s so damaging when Trump said that he would choose Putin and actually encouraged to invade NATO allies, instead of standing with our allies,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Haley Trails Trump by 36 Points in South Carolina, New Poll Shows

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      A Winthrop University poll released Wednesday shows Nikki Haley losing badly in South Carolina, her home state, with a little more than a week before the state’s Republican primary.Nearly two-thirds of likely Republican primary voters, 65 percent, said they supported former President Donald J. Trump, and only 29 percent said they supported Ms. Haley. Those numbers are very close to the average results of recent polls of South Carolina.After receiving 19 percent of the caucus vote in Iowa and 43 percent of the primary vote in New Hampshire, Ms. Haley has rested her argument for her campaign’s viability on the premise that she may not be beating Mr. Trump yet, but she is gaining ground. In an interview with NBC last month, she said of her performance in South Carolina, “I don’t think that necessarily has to be a win, but it certainly has to be better than what I did in New Hampshire, and it certainly has to be close.”The poll’s fine print was also bad for Ms. Haley: Only 49 percent of registered voters, including Republicans and Democrats, said they had a favorable opinion of her, down from 59 percent in the last Winthrop poll in November. The drop was sharpest among Republicans, 56 percent of whom had a favorable opinion of her, down from 71 percent in November.Mr. Trump’s approval rating among all registered voters was about the same as Ms. Haley’s, 48 percent. But he benefits from a huge 81 percent favorability rating among Republicans, and unlike Ms. Haley, he is getting more popular over time. In November, 45 percent overall and 77 percent of Republicans viewed him favorably.The poll was conducted from Feb. 2 to 10 among 1,717 adults registered to vote in South Carolina, 749 of whom said they were likely or certain to vote in the Republican primary. The margin of sampling error for the full poll is plus or minus 2.4 percentage points, and the margin of sampling error for likely primary voters is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.The timing of the poll means it predated Mr. Trump’s speech over the weekend, in which he suggested that he would encourage Russia to attack NATO members whom he considered financially delinquent and insinuated that Ms. Haley’s husband, a major in the National Guard who is deployed to Djibouti, had left the country to escape her.Ms. Haley is trying to recover from an embarrassing result last week in the Nevada primary, where Mr. Trump was not on the ballot but she nevertheless got fewer votes than a “None of These Candidates” option did. She has hammered Mr. Trump for those comments.“The most harm he’s ever come across is whether a golf ball hits him on a golf cart, and you’re going to go and mock our men and women in the military?” she said on Monday. More

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      Nikki Haley’s son calls Tim Scott ‘senator Judas’ over Trump support

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      The son of longshot Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley referred US senator Tim Scott – their fellow South Carolinan – as “senator Judas” while criticizing Scott’s endorsement of Donald Trump.“Senator Judas – excuse me, senator Scott,” Nalin Haley said during a campaign rally in Gilbert, South Carolina.Haley herself reportedly joked later on stage at the event, “Nalin, I will deal with you later.”According to Washington Post reporter Dylan Wells, a spokesperson for Scott responded by issuing a statement which referred to the senator’s mother and said: “You’d never hear Ms Frances or anyone from the Scott family talk like that.”Haley when she was governor of South Carolina appointed Scott to the US Senate in 2012 to fill the seat of Jim DeMint, who retired.Scott dropped out of the Republican presidential primary in November and in January announced his official endorsement of Trump, who is seeking to defeat Democratic incumbent Joe Biden to return to the White House.Haley said in an interview with Fox News on the endorsement: “South Carolina is a bloodsport. Everyone has a decision to make, and they have to live with their decision. He’ll have to live with his.”She added in response to Scott being floated as a possible running mate for Trump: “He’s going to be disappointed when Trump doesn’t win.”South Carolina is set to hold its Republican presidential preference primary on 24 February, where Haley is currently trailing in polls by double digits behind Trump in her home state.She was behind by 37 points in a recent Morning Consult poll and 26 points in a Washington Post-Monmouth survey.During an interview on CBS News’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Haley sought to make up some of the ground between her and Trump by criticizing comments the former president made about her husband, who is serving overseas with South Carolina’s national guard.Trump, at his own campaign rally Saturday, asked where Michael Haley was. Trump – who has often been seen without wife Melania by his side as he grapples with a litany of legal problems – also said Michael Haley was “gone”.Haley on Sunday said: “We can’t have someone who sits there and mocks our men and women who are trying to protect America.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionShe also said Trump’s disparaging remarks of military members was “a pattern”, which was possibly a reference to a report that the former president once referred to Americans who died in war as “losers” and “suckers”.Haley served as governor for nearly two terms before resigning in 2017 to serve as the US ambassador to the United Nations for the Trump White House.She has affirmed plans to remain in the Republican presidential primary through Super Tuesday on 5 March – when 16 state primary races are run – regardless of the result Haley’s campaign receives in South Carolina.Trump is enjoying his status as the Republicans’ presumptive 2024 White House nominee despite facing more than 90 pending criminal charges.Those charges allege that he tried to illegally subvert the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden, improperly retained government secrets after his presidency and made illicit hush-money payments to an adult film actor who has alleged an extramarital sexual encounter with Trump. More

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      Nikki Haley: Trump spends more time ‘ranting’ than fighting for American people

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      Nikki Haley pressed her case on Sunday to become the Republican presidential nominee by launching a sharp attack on her rival Donald Trump as a candidate who is set to spend more time in court than on the campaign trail this year and is intent on ranting about his own supposed victimhood rather than fighting for the American people.With less than three weeks to go before the Republican primary in her home state of South Carolina, which many observers see as the former governor and UN ambassador’s last stand, Haley attacked Trump for being more concerned with himself than with the future of the country. She told CNN’s State of the Union Sunday morning TV show that his multiple court cases, in which he faces 91 charges across four criminal cases, amounted to a “real issue”.Turning Trump’s own words against him, Haley said that the former president is “going to be spending more time in a courtroom than he’s going to be spending on the campaign trail”. At a time when the US is “in disarray and the world is on fire, we need a president that’s going to give us eight years of focus and discipline, not one that’s going to be sitting there ranting about how he’s a victim.”.She added that Trump, in recent days, “hasn’t once talked about the American people. And that’s a problem.”She went on to accuse him of having a “temper tantrum” after she garnered 43% of the vote in New Hampshire last month. “Why? Because he wasn’t controlling the situation.”Haley’s caustic attack on Trump came as he continues to command a seemingly unassailable lead in the Republican nomination contest. He comfortably won elections in Iowa and New Hampshire, and is now showing a double digit lead in opinion polls in South Carolina, where the Republican primary contest is on 24 February.In the latest Washington Post-Monmouth University poll of potential Republican primary voters in South Carolina, Trump was 26 points ahead on 58% to Haley’s 32%.As part of her increasingly direct assault on the standing and reputation of Trump, Haley has also taken to comparing him to Joe Biden. She pointedly predicted that if Trump became the Republican nominee, there would be a woman in the White House.In that circumstance, “Joe Biden will win and Kamala Harris will become president,” she said.She said that America deserved better than either Trump or Biden as leader. “Why are we doing this? We are allowing ourselves to have two 80-year-olds, who can’t serve eight years, who are both diminished whether it’s in their character or in their mental capacity.”For his part, Biden surprised no one by taking more than 95% of the primary vote in South Carolina on Saturday. His two competitors, Dean Phillips, a congressman from Minnesota, and self-help author Marianne Williamson, lagged far behind.South Carolina has been promoted by the Democratic party as its first official primary election, partly out of recognition that it was the state in which African American voters gifted Biden a huge win in 2020 that lifted him to the Democratic nomination. Jim Clyburn, the Democratic congressman from South Carolina who was seminal in turning that vote to Biden, was asked by CNN whether was retaining the support of Black voters in this election cycle.“Joe Biden has not lost any support among African Americans. You can go out and talk to 10 people, purposely find one who maybe gives off a different thought, but he has not lost any support among African Americans,” Clyburn said.Congressman Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic party leader in the House of Representatives, hinted at better things to come for Biden as he struggles to best Trump in many opinion polls.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It was a tremendous victory in South Carolina, a decisive one and I think it demonstrates that as we enter into the campaign season that the American people are beginning to focus on President Biden’s incredible track record of results,” he said.Jeffries cited economic and health measures executed by the Biden administration as the US worked its way out from the Covid-19 pandemic, “allowing the American economy to emerge as the most advanced in the world”.He added: “Yes, more needs to be done in addressing affordability and the inflationary pressures and President Biden has a vision to do that.”Biden was scheduled to travel to Las Vegas on Sunday for a campaign event in the Historic Westside neighborhood ahead of Nevada’s Democratic primary on Tuesday.Nevada is a key swing state for Biden to win again this year. He beat Trump by less than three points there in 2020, relying heavily on support from Hispanic and working class union member voters in the Las Vegas area.Biden needs a good showing in the Democratic primary, while the nominating race for the Republicans in Nevada is a confusing and messy one with two contests two days apart and Trump having a clear advantage over Haley.Meanwhile, Haley made a cameo appearance on the US comedy staple Saturday Night Live. More

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      South Carolina Democratic Primary Results 2024: Biden Wins

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      Polls close at 7 p.m. Eastern time. In 2020, results began to come in soon after, and about 98 percent of votes had been reported by midnight. South Carolina does not have voter registration by party, but those who participate in the Democratic election may not vote in the Republican election on Feb. 24. Voter […] More

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      ‘The weirdest campaign’: South Carolina delivers a win, but Biden still faces an uphill path

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      Surprise! Joe Biden won the Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina with a high-90s percentage that would make even Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un blush.But despite the low energy and low turnout, there was a wider narrative on Saturday about representation, the changing face of the US and a rebuke to the white identity politics of Donald Trump.Biden, 81, may be a stick-in-the-mud but it was he who last year tore up the tradition, which took hold in earnest with Jimmy Carter in 1976, of Iowa and New Hampshire going first in picking the Democratic candidate for president.At his behest, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) rearranged the electoral calendar so that South Carolina would have first say in shaping the race this time. That South Carolina is also that state that revived Biden’s ailing 2020 campaign probably didn’t do its cause any harm.Still, anyone who spent parts of last month freezing in Iowa and New Hampshire after the Republican primary was reminded how demographically unrepresentative those states are. Both are about 90% white. At Trump’s campaign rallies, unsurprisingly, the whiteness appeared even more monolithic.In South Carolina, however, one in four residents is Black. The state is more in keeping with a rainbow nation where Republicans appear to be in denial that white Christians are no longer the majority. Biden’s decision to put it first was more important than any worries about enthusiasm or turnout on Saturday.“For South Carolina to go first is now a badge of honour and pride for so many folks,” Jaime Harrison, chair of the DNC and himself a Black South Carolinian, told reporters in Columbia on Saturday night. “I had one woman who was just teary-eyed with me when I was on the trail and just talking about the importance and the significance of going first.“Hearing the stories about people who could not vote and having those memories yourself and now hearing us talk about ‘the hands that picked cotton are now the hands that are picking presidents’ – that is impactful, it’s powerful, and that is the imagery that is important for the nation to see and understand.”Still, the final days before the historic vote felt somewhat anticlimactic thanks to a combination of Biden’s dominance as incumbent, feeble opposition from Dean Phillips and Marianne Williamson, and the lack of a Republican primary on the same day (which will take place later in the month).It was all a far cry from the blockbuster 2016 primary season, when Trump was knocking out Republican stiffs while Bernie Sanders was giving Hillary Clinton a run for her money. On Friday Kamala Harris, the vice-president, drew only a modest crowd at a university in Orangeburg.On Saturday, Democrats threw a watch party at the South Carolina state fairgrounds in Columbia, serving a buffet of meatballs, chicken, pasta, deviled eggs, fruit and vegetables. Red, white and blue flags were hung from the roof, tall blue curtains lined the walls, and the floor was carpeted blue and red. Two TV screens proclaimed “F1rst in the nati♥n”, the heart doubling as a map of South Carolina. There was a giant American flag behind the stage.The president was not present but Congressman James Clyburn, whose endorsement transformed Biden’s fortunes here four years ago, did get him on the phone and put him on loudspeaker, prompting whoops and cheers from the crowd.Biden said: “I hope you can hear me. So what happened?” Everyone laughed but then there was feedback on the mic.Harrison replied: “I think a lot of stuff happened here in South Carolina today for you, sir.” Biden asked: “What kind of turnout you got?”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHarrison said: “Mr President, we’re waiting to get the final numbers but from what I’m told by some folks. I think you got it.” More laughter in the room.None of it said much about Biden’s chances in November. He has already moved into general election mode, unleashing on Trump in a series of speeches. A common sentiment among his supporters in South Carolina was puzzlement – and frustration – that his booming economy is not getting the credit it deserves. Polls show that many voters, including some Black voters, agree with his likely opponent’s slogan: “Better off under Trump.”There are other headaches too. As record numbers of migrants arrive at the southern border, Biden is criticised as too soft by the right and, as he now threatens draconian measures, too Trumpian by the left. Republicans say Biden botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan and displayed a weakness that emboldened Russia, Iran and Hamas, but progressives and Arab Americans are dismayed by his apparent lack of compassion for thousands of Palestinian dead.Finally, of course, there is the age question. At 81, Biden is the oldest president in American history. Would-be rivals such as Phillips and Nikki Haley are pushing the cause of a new generation. All these variables could matter in an election likely to be decided by gossamer-thin margins in a handful of swing states.Visiting his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday, Biden acknowledged: “It’s the weirdest campaign I’ve ever been engaged in.”But interviews with voters during primary season in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have offered a reminder of an undeniable fact: Trump remains toxic to huge swaths of the American population. They will do anything to stop him. A criminal conviction between now and November may make them redouble their efforts.America’s racial divisions will be at the heart of it again. Christale Spain, the first Black woman elected as chair of South Carolina’s Democratic party, recalled in an interview that her state’s primary following the Iowa and New Hampshire contests in past cycles meant “we were correcting the course, correcting the ship every time”.And in a speech to supporters, Harrison suggested that part of Biden’s legacy is that future Democratic candidates will have to earn, not take for granted, African American support. “We proved that the days of folks parachuting in on election day asking for our votes – those days are over,” he said. “We have an electorate that looks like today’s Democratic party and tomorrow’s America.” More

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      Biden wins South Carolina Democratic primary for presidential nomination

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      President Joe Biden has again won the South Carolina presidential primary, his first formal primary win of the election season.Amid low voter turnout, the Associated Press projected that Biden also won all 55 of the state’s Democratic delegates. Another seven delegates are pledged by party leaders and elected officials, such as South Carolina’s lone Democratic congressman, Jim Clyburn. Neither Dean Phillips, the congressman from Minnesota, nor author Marianne Williamson received at least 15% of the statewide vote or 15% of the vote in any congressional district, the threshold necessary to win delegates.The president sent out a statement shortly after the results were called in his favor, specifically highlighting Black voters, who comprise 26% of state residents and a significant portion of the Democratic voting base in South Carolina.“As I said four years ago, this campaign is for everyone who has been knocked down, counted out and left behind. That is still true today. With more than 14m new jobs and a record 24 straight months – two years – of the unemployment rate under 4%, including a record low unemployment rate for Black Americans, we are leaving no one behind,” he said.“In 2020, it was the voters of South Carolina who proved the pundits wrong, breathed new life into our campaign, and set us on the path to winning the Presidency.“Now in 2024, the people of South Carolina have spoken again and I have no doubt that you have set us on the path to winning the Presidency again – and making Donald Trump a loser – again.Biden continued: “When I was elected president, I said the days of the backbone of the Democratic party being at the back of the line were over. That was a promise made and a promise kept. Now, you are first in the nation.”The Democratic National Committee changed the national election calendar last year to designate South Carolina as the first official contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, taking the privilege away from the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Biden did not participate in the New Hampshire primary, which state Democratic officials held over the objections of the national committee.Marvin Pendarvis, a Democratic state representative from North Charleston, said the primary was important, regardless of turnout.“Everyone probably wondered why was it so important that we got turnout, even when we knew that Joe Biden was going to win South Carolina. It’s because we are first in the nation. It’s because we want to maintain that status going into 2028. And it is big for our party to be able to showcase why South Carolina was chosen to be first: because we are representative of the Democratic party, not only in our diversity of values, but also how we look and how we come together as Democrats.“We’re the ones that spearheaded Joe Biden to get into office in 2020,” Pendarvis added. “We’ll do it again in 2024.”South Carolina’s primaries are open, allowing any registered voter to participate, though voters much choose only one primary – Democratic or Republican – to vote in. Of South Carolina’s 3.3 million registered voters, about 13% participated in the 2016 Democratic primary, which was won overwhelmingly by Hillary Clinton, while 16% voted in the 2020 primary that separated Biden from the pack.South Carolina’s Republicans go to the polls on 24 February, when former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley faces former president Donald Trump.Biden’s statement ended on a warning about the upcoming contest: “The stakes in this election could not be higher. There are extreme and dangerous voices at work in the country – led by Donald Trump – who are determined to divide our nation and take us backward. We cannot let that happen. We’ve come a long way these past four years – with America now having the strongest economy in the world and among the lowest inflation of any major economy. Let’s keep pushing forward. Let’s finish what we started – together.” More