GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley continued to talk out of both sides of her mouth when it comes to Trump. There was supposed to be another useless Republican presidential debate prior to the New Hampshire primary, but Haley backed out and said she would not attend unless Trump showed up as well, calling it pointless without him there.
That apparently did not stop her from attending another CNN "town hall" with Jake Tapper moderating, and Haley had this pathetic exchange with Tapper when asked about whether she'd pardon Trump.
TAPPER: So Donald Trump is not willing to debate you, but he is very much the elephant in the room, and I want to ask you about something he posted on his social media at 1:59 a.m. this morning, on Truth Social, continuing his assertion that he should have blanket immunity for anything he did as president including the events surrounding January 6th, 2021. He wrote, quote, in all caps.
HALEY: Of course.
TAPPER: He wrote “Even events that cross the line must fall under total immunity.” What are your thoughts on that?
HALEY: No. I mean, it should be common sense, right? Common sense. Obviously if a president is doing something and it's related to, you know, whether it's terrorist threats and something like that and people die, that's one thing.
But do you get total freedom to do whatever you want? No. That's never the way it was intended to be. There needs to be accountability. No one is above the law.
But I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know what the limits are, but I think we should be using common sense when it comes to that.
TAPPER: Well, on accountability, if you become president and Donald Trump's trials are still ongoing, would you preemptively pardon him without waiting for a conviction the way that Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon?
HALEY: No. I think everything needs to play out. I think it's important that that happens, and I honestly think president Trump would want that to happen. If he wants to defend himself and prove that he has been treated the wrong way or whether it's political, I think he would want to fight for that.
You know, you only want to talk about a pardon after someone has been convicted. So, I would assume we'd let that play out, and I would think he would want that to play out.
TAPPER: If he were convicted, would you then pardon him?
HALEY: I said I would pardon him with the simple reason of, you know, when you talk about a pardon, someone's already been found guilty. But for me, the last thing we need is an 80-year-old president sitting in jail, because that's just going to further divide our country.
This is no longer about whether he's innocent or guilty. This is about the fact how do we bring the country back together, and I am determined to make sure all of this division, all of this chaos goes away, and I think a pardon for him would make all of that go away and I think it would be healing for the country.
No Nikki, it would not be "healing" for the country to see the criminal pardoned, any more than it "healed" the country when Ford pardoned Nixon. And giving him a pardon is the opposite of accountability.
There are no "moderate" Republicans. They're all scared to death of this criminal that hopes to make his way back into the White House and destroy what's left of our democracy. Shame on Haley and the lot of them for continuing to enable him.
