‘I will put my brain up against yours anytime. Bring it…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Nikki Haley, former South Carolina governor and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, challenged presidential candidate Joe Biden after he appeared to question her intelligence.
Haley, a Republican whose parents immigrated from India, was the state’s first and only female governor, as well as its first and only non-white governor.
During a campaign event this week, Biden began to say that Haley did not have the brains to expand Medicaid when she was leading South Carolina, but he stopped himself and said she had not had the “foresight.”
“There’s no one I’ve respected more than Jim Clyburn,” says @JoeBiden in Georgetown.
He explains the reason he was “a little emotional” this morning was because he was thinking about Clyburn’s late wife Emily, whom he came to know well over the years.https://t.co/0YbwpT5Q1n pic.twitter.com/DBcU54WGxd
— Jamie Lovegrove (@jslovegrove) February 26, 2020
Biden—who has faced prior criticism for his racist views and inappropriate groping of women—clarified that he didn’t want to say anything about Haley’s intellect, because that would not have been “polite.”
Haley offered a sharp rebuke:
Hold up Joe. I will put my brain up against yours anytime. Bring it. #GodBlessJoe https://t.co/x5bfrVCrCa
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 26, 2020
While governor, Haley opted out of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, earning praise from fiscal conservatives.
Haley blasted the other Democratic candidates as well during a speech at the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference this week, declaring that President Donald Trump could beat any one of the potential nominees.
“You know what they’ve forgotten? They’ve forgotten what I learned at the United Nations, which was every socialist country that we ever came in contact with wanted to be America,” she said.
“They wanted what we had: They wanted freedom of religion, they wanted freedom of speech, they wanted freedom,” she continued.
Republicans have speculated whether Haley plans to launch a presidential bid of her own in 2024, but Haley has not yet confirmed or denied the rumors.