Biden hits Haley over Civil War response
President Biden took a swipe at Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley for failing to mention slavery while responding to a question about the cause of the Civil War.
Reposting a video of Haley's response during a town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Biden offered a response on X, the social media platform formerly called Twitter: "It was about slavery."
The video captured the exchange between Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, and a New Hampshire voter who asked the White House hopeful about the cause of the Civil War.
“Well, don’t come with an easy question, right,” Haley said during Wednesday's town hall in Berlin, N.H. “I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”
Haley said it "always" comes down to the role of government, telling the crowd, “We need to have capitalism, we need to have economic freedom. "
“We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way," she added.
The Granite State voter then pressed Haley on her answer, saying it was "astonishing" that she did not mention slavery in a discussion about the Civil War.
“What do you want me to say about slavery?” she asked.
“You answered my question. Thank you,” the voter said.
Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison also slammed Haley's response, calling it “a slap in the face to Black voters.”
“This isn’t hard: condemning slavery is the baseline for anyone who wants to be President of the United States, but Nikki Haley and the rest of the MAGA GOP are choking on their words trying to rewrite history,” Harrison said in a statement.
Haley has seen an uptick in support in New Hampshire in recent weeks, though former President Trump continues to hold his lead in the early voting state, along with national polls. The Decision Desk and The Hill's polling index shows Trump with a 17 percentage point lead over Haley in New Hampshire.
As for the national polls, Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are neck-and-neck for second place behind Trump. As of Thursday, Trump leads the national polls with 63.1 percent of the support, followed by Haley with 10.8 percent and DeSantis close behind with 10.6 percent, according to The Decision Desk and The Hill's polling index.
South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union in 1860. In the state’s proclamation, the government's reasoning for seceding names slavery and points to the “increasing hostility” of non-slave holding states to the “institution of slavery.”
Haley was pressed on the war's origin during a 2010 interview, where she described the war as between two disparate sides that were fighting for “tradition” and “change,” The Associated Press reported.
She said then that the Confederate flag was "not something that is racist," the news wire added.
Five years after that interview, Haley urged South Carolina lawmakers to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol after nine Black churchgoers were killed in a mass shooting in Charleston.
The Hill reached out to Haley's campaign team for comment.