Nikki Haley, a former candidate for the presidency, announced on Wednesday that she will cast her vote for Donald Trump.
Trump is the widely presumed frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, and Haley's comments came despite the fact that she has previously referred to him as "not qualified" to govern the nation, as CBS News reported.
Despite all of her harsh and detailed condemnation of the indicted former president's acts and persona, Haley said that she will be voting for Trump in her first political public appearance since she made the decision to stop her campaign.
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley was appointed to the position of United States Ambassador to the United Nations during the presidency of Donald Trump.
Since the beginning of the year, Haley has referred to President Trump as "unhinged" and "more unhinged than he ever was."
During a rally in February, Haley said that Trump was "not qualified to be the president of the United States," following Trump's criticism of Haley's husband, who was serving in the military.
"I will be voting for Trump," Haley said during Wednesday's event at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. "Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech."
During the speech that she gave in March to announce that she would be suspending her candidacy, Haley stated that she has always supported the nominee of the Republican Party.
However, she cited the words of Margaret Thatcher, who had previously served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom: "Never just follow the crowd. Always make up your own mind."
"It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him," Haley said when she dropped out of the race.
"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."
However, following speculation about his possible running mate, the former president put rumors to rest. In a May 11 post to his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote that Haley "is not under consideration" to be his vice presidential candidate.
"Nothing has changed" for Republicans who voted for Haley, according to the Biden campaign in response to her announcement.
"Nothing has changed for the millions of Republican voters who continue to cast their ballots against Donald Trump in the primaries and care deeply about the future of our democracy, standing strong with our allies against foreign adversaries, and working across the aisle to get things done for the American people — while also rejecting the chaos, division and violence that Donald Trump embodies," said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler.
