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White House hopeful Nikki Haley rebuked over Civil War comments
- Nikki Haley didn’t mention slavery when asked at a New Hampshire town hall what caused the US Civil War
- The incident is the latest to inject debates about race and slavery into the 2024 presidential contest
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US presidential hopeful Nikki Haley faced a firestorm of criticism after failing to mention slavery as a cause of the American Civil War when asked what led to the conflict at a campaign event.
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Less than three weeks before voting begins in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, it was the first major stumble for a candidate whose campaign has seen her propelled from an unlikely outsider to front-runner Donald Trump’s biggest threat.
The former United Nations ambassador told a town hall crowd on Wednesday in Berlin, New Hampshire that the cause of the bloody 1861-1865 war was “basically how the government was going to run” and “freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do”.
She said: “It always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are”.
Apparently caught off guard, Haley turned the debate back at the questioner, who responded that he was not the one running for president, and that it was “astonishing” that slavery had not come up in her answer.
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