Former Republican primary candidate Nikki Haley told “Face the Nation” on Sunday that J.D. Vance’s repeated comments about childfree women, whether it be about “childfree cat ladies” or his denunciation of American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, “doesn’t help” the Trump-Vance presidential campaign.
When asked if Vance had been an “effective communicator” of the pair’s policies in light of those comments, Haley replied, “Policy…you either look at style or you look at content. As a voter, I choose to look at content…Content is lower taxes, lower housing prices, immigration, national security. That’s content. Style is, it’s not helpful to talk about whether a woman should have children. It’s not helpful to say things that depend on personality.”
“Americans are smart. They don’t need distracting noise. They just want to know how you can help them,” Haley added.
She argued that voters should look at the track record of both candidates: “There’s a stark contrast. Harris wasn’t strong on the border. Trump was strong on the border. Harris wanted to repeal fracking. Now she’s repealing it, but energy production is not as strong as it was under Trump.”
Haley also took issue with Harris’ stance on American healthcare, particularly her support for the “Medicare for All” bill passed by Senator Bernie Sanders in 2017. Harris explained: at that time“It’s about understanding that health care should be a right, not a privilege. And it’s also about being smart.”
“It’s much better for people to have meaningful access to affordable health care from birth onwards, at every stage of their lives, because otherwise we as taxpayers would be paying a lot of money to get health care in emergency rooms. So this is not only the morally and ethically right thing to do, it also makes sense from a financial standpoint. Or if you talk about it as a return on investment for taxpayers, it makes sense.”
Harris has not outlined a clear health care plan for 2024, but she has backed away from the more progressive health care positions she took during the 2017 and 2020 primaries, and Haley herself has said she does not support any steps toward Medicare for All.
“When we talk about Medicare for All and we talk about eliminating private health insurance, it’s the same as Canada,” Haley said. “We should look at socialist health care. We never want to get to that stage, because then you lose access to IVF and other treatments.”
In 2021, Vance criticized teachers union president Weingarten for not having children: “If she wants to brainwash and destroy the minds of children, she should have children herself and leave ours alone,” Vance argued, a remark that was recently revisited by the Harris campaign.
August 29, Weingarten He told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki.“It was odd for him to double down on it now, because in August and September, every parent, every teacher, every kid is thinking about the New Year and what it means and what engagements are. So he must be really disconnected from life.”
You can watch the full “Face the Nation” interview with Nikki Haley in the video above.
