Nikki Haley Derides Trump After Stunning E. Jean Carroll Verdict: “America Can Do Better”

Nikki Haley attacked the GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump, after a Manhattan jury ordered the former president to pay columnist E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million on Friday for defamation — an amount that far exceeded what the plaintiff was asking for in closing arguments.

“Donald Trump wants to be the presumptive Republican nominee, and we’re talking about $83 million in damages,” Haley wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “We’re not talking about fixing the border. We’re not talking about tackling inflation. America can do better than Donald Trump and Joe Biden.”

The defamation charges stem from a lawsuit Carroll filed in 2019, accusing Trump of raping her in the mid-1990s. A jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll in June of last year, and this second trial concerned statements Trump made attacking Carroll’s character after she went public with the accusation.

Haley has long called for the GOP to “move forward” from Trump to avoid having a presidential candidate embroiled in litigation during an election year. (Trump currently faces 91 criminal counts across four cases and a civil fraud trial unfolding in New York.) But her comments Friday mark a significant escalation, as she hopes to put together a last-ditch attempt to challenge Trump in the Republican primary.

Though Trump wasn’t in the courtroom to hear the verdict directly, he quickly responded to the ruling Friday on Truth Social, calling it a “Biden Directed Witch Hunt.” “Our Legal System is out of control, and being used as a Political Weapon, “ he wrote. “They have taken away all First Amendment Rights. THIS IS NOT AMERICA!”

A significant challenge for Haley is that Trump’s appeal among GOP primary voters has only increased along with the extent of his legal woes, as the party has coalesced around the narrative that the litigation represents a Biden-led conspiracy to keep Trump from power. Unsurprisingly, several top Trump surrogates, including several rumored possible vice presidential picks, quickly came to the former president’s defense on Friday.

Florida Representative Matt Gaetz wrote on X that “a country where you cannot deny a fantastical, false allegation is not a free country.” At the same time, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed Trump was “denied a fair trial in NY where judges are now political activist [sic] instead of delivering justice.”

Former Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who herself is being sued for defamation for spreading lies about the 2022 election, released a statement calling Carroll a “lunatic.” “Defamation accusations are being weaponized against the leaders of the America First movement, whether they be Trump, Rudy Guiliani, or me,” she wrote. “If you say anything against the corrupt political machine you are targeted.” 

Lake added: “There aren’t enough Soros attorneys in the world to sue all of us.” (There is no evidence that George Soros, a billionaire who is often the target of antisemitic conspiracies, was involved in Carroll’s suit.)

One of the lengthier statements out of Trumpworld came from upstate New York Representative Elise Stefanik, who has hit the campaign trail hard with Trump and is rumored to be in the vice presidential conversation.

Before Trump’s election in 2016, Stefanik, who ascended to House leadership in 2021, fashioned herself a Trump critic and called Trump’s comments on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which he appeared to brag about sexually assaulting women, “inappropriate,” “offensive,” and “wrong.” In 2018, she told CBS that she’d “disagreed with the President’s rhetoric numerous times when it comes to how he addresses women.”

But in her response to the verdict, Stefanik called the ruling an “outrageous” instance of “election interference” by the Democrats and President Biden, “who is so lost that he wore his hard hat backwards.” “They don’t care that they are destroying our country in the process,” she wrote.