Nikki Haley Says She Will Vote for Trump

Nikki Haley criticized President Biden on foreign policy.

WASHINGTON — In her first public appearance since she dropped her Republican presidential bid in March, Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, on Wednesday said she would vote for former President Donald J. Trump, stopping short of an official endorsement.

Speaking at the Hudson Institute in Washington, a conservative think tank, Ms. Haley delivered a scathing critique of President Biden and Republicans on foreign policy. During her speech, she made no mention of the elephant in the room: Mr. Trump.

But in a fireside chat afterward, the moderator, Peter Rough, asked Ms. Haley who she believed would do a better job in the White House. Ms. Haley paused before carefully continuing her answer. As a voter, she said, she would put her priorities behind a president who would have the “backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account,” secure the nation’s borders and curb the national debt.

“Trump has not been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear many, many times,” she said. “But Biden has been a catastrophe. So, I will be voting for Trump.” A few sighs were audible in the crowd as she spoke.

As Mr. Trump’s longest-standing rival in the 2024 primary contest, Ms. Haley carved out an important lane for herself as the voice for Republican and independent voters looking for an alternative to the former president. While she was included in recent chatter about Mr. Trump’s possible running mates, he recently all but ruled out the possibility of selecting Ms. Haley, who also is a former South Carolina governor.

Her decision on whether to endorse him could play a pivotal role in shaping the presidential contest. Ms. Haley, who was named the new Walter P. Stern chairwoman at the Hudson Institute, has built a formidable network of high-dollar donors and has a solid base of younger people, college-educated voters and independents that she has warned Mr. Trump he needs to win. But she and the former president grew increasingly bitter at the end of the primary.

In her chat after the speech, she also said Mr. Trump “would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him.”

Representatives for Mr. Trump’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden campaign officials said Ms. Haley’s remarks would not sway the anti-Trump moderates and independents who reject the violence and division that Mr. Trump represents. Though Ms. Haley never embraced the anti-Trump label, many came to see her candidacy as a principled (even if futile) stand against Mr. Trump and his transformation of his party.

“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,” Michael Tyler, the communications director for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, said in a statement. “Only one candidate shares those values, and only one campaign is working hard every day to earn their support — and that’s President Biden’s.”

The Biden campaign has been working behind the scenes to reach out to high-profile Republicans and Haley voters. It is also planning to roll out a grass-roots group with dedicated staff workers to organize Republican voters in key battlegrounds.

Robert Schwartz, who heads the Haley Voters for Biden PAC, said Ms. Haley’s comments on Wednesday were not surprising. She has a future in Republican politics and her own personal, political and partisan reasons to maintain ties with those in her party, he added. But he contended her voters had “entirely different calculations” on what was best for the country.

“I am not going to sugarcoat it — it is bad news,” Mr. Schwartz said. “But it is something that we expected, and taking a step back, it is actually a pretty weak endorsement.”

Ms. Haley echoed many of the signature themes from her campaign during her speech. She criticized Mr. Biden for his withdrawal from Afghanistan and what she described as his failure to take on China and Iran. She called his recent decision to withhold a shipment of bombs to Israel as “foolish.”

“Withholding them validates the totally false and destructive narrative that Israel is acting unjustly by defending herself,” she said.

But she did not do the same to Mr. Trump, whom she had described as “unhinged” and a dangerous agent of chaos throughout much of her campaign. Instead, she reserved her choice words for members of her own party, disparaging them for promoting an isolationist approach to Ukraine’s war with Russia.

“Just a few weeks before Biden threw Israel to the wolves, many Republicans in Congress tried to push Ukraine off a cliff,” she said, praising Speaker Mike Johnson for demonstrating “moral courage and a clear understanding of the stakes.”

Michael Gold contributed reporting.