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On the heels of a very bad week for Nikki Haley, the Republican presidential candidate said she would pardon Donald Trump if he's convicted of federal crimes. "I would pardon Trump if he is found guilty," she said at a campaign event in Plymouth, New Hampshire, on Thursday.
“A leader needs to think about what’s in the best interest of the country," Haley went on. "What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country. What's in the best interest of our country is to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him."
Haley was responding to a question from a 9-year-old in the audience, who joked that she was “the new John Kerry” because she was “a flip-flopper on the Donald Trump issue.”
“How can you change your opinion like that in just eight years, and will you pardon Donald Trump?” the child asked.
Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under the Trump administration, has often been accused of a lack of resolve when it comes to her ex-boss. She had indicated her openness to pardoning him in the past; after Trump was indicted in the classified documents case in June, she chided him for being "incredibly reckless with our national security" in an interview on a conservative radio show but said she would be "inclined in favor of a pardon" for him.
Her reasoning echoes President Gerald Ford, who worried that “ugly passions” might arise while waiting for a trial when he controversially pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in 1974.
There are some big ifs here, of course. This could only happen if Haley wins the presidency, and if Trump is found guilty in any of his federal criminal cases (presidents don't have the power to pardon state crimes, like Trump's cases in New York and Georgia). But her comments Thursday have opened Haley up to further criticism after what has already been a rough week for her on the campaign trail.
The South Carolina Republican made headlines after giving a disastrous answer to a question about what caused the Civil War. As my MSNBC colleague Steve Benen wrote, she "said a lot of words in response to the question, but Haley never got around to mentioning slavery."
She later backtracked and accused the person who asked the question of being "a Democrat plant."
With the New Hampshire primary less than a month away, recent polls show Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis neck-in-neck for second place, with Trump far ahead of the field.
Haley's willingness to pardon Trump could be seen as attempt to curry favor with his supporters, or with Trump himself. At another campaign event on Thursday, she declined to rule out being Trump's running mate should he win the GOP presidential nomination, offering yet another lengthy response that didn't really seem to say anything.