SC’s Haley blasts Trump for praising ‘enemy’ Kim Jong Un, other takeaways from town hall

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called Kim Jong Un a “thug” in a Sunday night town hall on CNN, saying it is wrong for former President Donald Trump to praise the North Korean dictator like he did in recent days.

The Republican presidential hopeful and former ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration made the comments Sunday during a CNN Town Hall when discussing Trump’s congratulations to Kim for the North Korean leader’s appointment to the World Health Organization’s executive board.

“There’s nothing good or decent about Kim Jong Un,” Haley said during the CNN town hall. “I don’t think we should congratulate dictators. Congratulate our friends. Don’t congratulate our enemies. It emboldens them when we do.”

Trump congratulated Kim on his social media platform Truth Social. Trump and Kim had a close relationship during the Trump administration, which included letters to one another and three meetings between the two over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Other takeaways from Haley’s town hall

Haley would not say if she would sign a six-week ban on abortions such as the one signed in her home state by her successor, S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster, which has been blocked by a judge. She instead called for media to question whether the current president and vice president support abortions late in pregnancies.

“I will answer that when you answer — when you ask Kamala (Harris) and (Joe) Biden if they would agree to 37 weeks, 38 weeks, 39 weeks,” Haley said to moderator Jake Tapper. “Then I’ll answer your question.”

Haley also took jabs at her Republican competitor who is polling second in the GOP race.

Haley called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a hypocrite when it comes to his handling of Disney, pointing to how Florida awarded $578 million in tax breaks to the company after it planned to move 2,000 jobs from California to the Sunshine State. Disney has since scrapped those plans.

Disney and DeSantis have been locked in a battle over the company’s self-governing status after Disney criticized Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Law, dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, signed by DeSantis.

“Disney’s view is that it’s appropriate to be teaching a kindergartener that somehow they can change their gender. That’s totally unacceptable to be going on in school,” DeSantis said Friday during his campaign swing through South Carolina. “Even some of these Republicans now are taking Disney’s side saying that somehow I was wrong to do what we did, but let me just say very clearly, we stand for the protection of our children. We will fight anybody seeking to rob them of their innocence and on those principles, there will be no compromise.”

Disney has filed a lawsuit against DeSantis alleging the governor violated the company’s First Amendment rights.

“Because they went and criticized him, now he’s going to spend taxpayer dollars on a lawsuit,” Haley said. “All this vendetta stuff, we’ve been down that road, again we can’t go down that. Businesses were my partners in South Carolina. We didn’t always get along. Luckily, South Carolina is very anti-woke, but when you have a company like that, don’t bring the citizens’ taxpayer dollars into it. Pick up the phone, deal with it, settle it the way you should, and I think he’s being hypocritical on it.”

When it came to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, Haley said Ukraine winning the war will prevent escalation into a larger conflict.

“This is about preventing war,” Haley said. “And so the way you prevent war is not that we give cash to Ukraine and not that we put troops on the ground, but that we get with our allies and make sure that we give them the equipment and ammunition to win.”