Haley Quits Presidential Campaign, Refuses To Endorse Trump

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley quit her presidential campaign on Wednesday, finally yielding to calls for her to drop out within the Republican Party. However, unlike most former presidential candidates who endorsed former President Donald Trump after quitting the race, Haley did not offer any backing for the GOP frontrunner.

Instead, she suggested that voters make up their own minds on who to vote for.

In a speech announcing her decision to quit, she began, “In all likelihood, Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee when our party convention meets in July. I congratulate him and wish him well. I wish anyone well who would be America’s president. Our country is too precious to let our differences divide us. I have always been a conservative Republican and always supported the Republican nominee. But on this question, as she did on so many others, Margaret Thatcher provided some good advice, when she said, ‘never just follow the crowd, always make up your own mind.’”

She then offered some advice to Trump, saying, “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him.”

“And I hope he does that. At its best, politics is about bringing people into your cause, not turning them away. And our conservative cause badly needs more people. This is now his time for choosing,” she added.

The lack of an outright endorsement in her speech does not come as a total surprise, as she revealed in a Sunday interview that she might not endorse Trump even though she made a pledge to the Republican National Committee to support the eventual GOP presidential nominee.

Responding to a question about whether she was no longer bound by the pledge to RNC, the former U.N. ambassador, who only managed to win Republican primary contests in Washington D.C. and Vermont, said, “No, I think I’ll make what decision I want to make, but that’s not something I’m thinking about.”

Trump, has, however, taken it upon himself to invite Haley’s supporters to join his campaign, which he described as “the greatest movement in the history of our nation.”

In a post to Truth Social before Haley quit the race, he said, “I’d like to thank my family, friends, and the Great Republican Party for helping me to produce, by far, the most successful Super Tuesday in HISTORY, and would further like to invite all of the Haley supporters to join the greatest movement in the history of our Nation.”

Before that, Trump slammed Haley for his victory over her on Super Tuesday, where he won 11 states and upped his delegate count from 273 to 1,031.

“Nikki Haley got TROUNCED last night, in record-setting fashion, despite the fact that Democrats, for reasons unknown, are allowed to vote in Vermont, and various other Republican Primaries. Much of her money came from Radical Left Democrats, as did many of her voters, almost 50% according to the polls,” he wrote in a celebratory post on Truth Social.