All right. We do have breaking n Presidential candidate Nikki Haley is on the radio righ as we speak, doing a sort of cle following questions last night at a rally in New Hampshire. She was asked last night what was the cause of the Civil What was the Civil War about? I want you to listen to her answer from last night and note what it does not include, which is any mention of slavery. Listen. What was the cause of the United Civil War? Well, don't come with an easy qu I mean, I think the cause of the Civil W was basically how government was going to run the freedoms and what people could and couldn And she did go on there, and there was no mention of the word slavery in her answer last night. Today, again, as we speak on the was something a little different, seen as Jessica did here with us in studio now. What's Nikki Haley saying now? Well, so I'm just getting this in righ because, as you mentioned, she is on the radio, but she's saying, of course, the Civil War was about slavery. But then she said this. She was talking about what it means today. And she says it's about freedom and individual rights. I think we have that sound. So I'm going to let you listen t Well, two things on this track. I mean, of course, the Civil War was about slavery. We know that that's that's the easy part of it. What I was saying was, what does it mean to us today? What it means to us today is about freedom. That's what that was all about. It was about individual freedom. It was about economic freedom. It was about individual rights. Our goal is to make sure, no, we never go back to the stain of slavery. But what's the lesson in all of Okay, so doing a bit of clean up She also, John said it was definitely a Democratic plant to ask this q The voter was a Democratic plan. She says that's why I later aske What does it mean to you? And if you listen to the longer clip of that, she says, you know, what do you think and what do you want me to say about this? Or what do you want me to say about slavery? Our reporting from my colleague and our embed there, Ebony Davis who was who was filing from there, said that the voter was said that they had just looked at her previous comments on this when she was running for governor of South Carolina and wanted to see if if she still said the same thing He said it was roughly the same He said he was not political, but that he just wanted an answe The the overarching fact here, though, is that this is what Nik Haley is talking about today when her campaign wants to be ta about a million other things. But Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are more than happy for her to be dealing with this. Well, look, I mean, I've covered a lot of campaigns The speed with which she came fo Now with this clarification or clean up or whatever you want to call it, it tells you how serious the campaign thinks it is. They can't leave this out there. They decided they had to get her on the radio talking right immediately. And so now we have this we have this clip. I would imagine we're going to have a clip of he on television as soon as she starts making the that she will talk to the camera But it's worth noting she doesn't do a ton of what we call gaggles. But just when you're on the road the candidates will just talk to the press. So it will be interesting to see to watch for that. If she does that today. Just kidding. Great to have you again here. I'm very excited to. We have here you know who's also here with us John Berman. It's nice to see you, John. It was like you took a week off. I mean, it was too long, you know what I'm saying? It was too long. But that's all I'm saying. I mean, all the buzz is great. Joining us now to discuss all of this and John Berman's absenc CNN political commentator and former South Carolina state representative Bakari Sellers, and CNN senior political comment and former special assistant to President George W Bush, Scott Jennings. Hello, fellows. I'm going to start with you, Bakari, because you are South Carolina boy. What happened here? One of the things that really st wasn't just that she didn't ment but at the end when the voter as you know, this question, and she said, well, what where do you think slavery? What do you think this is all ab And he said, Well, I'm surprised you didn't mention the word slav And she said this. What do you want me to say about slavery, Bakari? Yeah, no, I'm embarrassed as a South Carol I think that this is when Nikki Haley gets in trouble and everybody who will who knows Nikki Haley knows that she's immensely talented when it comes to just the skill set of politics. However, she gets into this thin where she doesn't really stand f and she turns herself into a pretzel on very, very simple issues, simple quest And the fact remains that she's from South Carolina. We know that when we see it from the union, the first line of that order of secession, she actually dealt with non slave holding states having hostility toward slavery. I mean, this is like this also frustrates me because we take history out of s We have probably the second or third leading candidate for the Republican primary. And this shows you the importance of history because she just fumbled it. Not only did she fumbled it, but she was historically inaccur and she was intellectually disho And so for Nikki Haley to do tha on one breath and then champion taking down the Confederate flag and all of these other things in South Carolina, it just it doesn't really match. She needs to get her story toget in her response this morning was just utterly disappointing. This wasn't a war about economic The economic freedom of what the goods produced by slavery. This war wasn't about states rig A state's right to do what enslave people. I mean, so it's silly. I know she wishes she was talking about something but this is why she's not ready The big the big light limelight against somebody like Donald Tru Scott, I want to get your take o because sometimes people will look at this and say well, she's trying to kind of not say a bad thing about America and play to the ba Is that what you see happening h I think it was just a gaffe. I mean, I think if she had it to do over again, she would have said, of course, it was fought over slavery and m and continue to talk about the things that ar that are motivating her campaign A couple of things jump out to me about this. Number one, in New Hampshire, there's a semi-open primary. So she's really hoping a lot of independent voters come in to the Republican primar and vote for her. My guess is this is not what they want to hear from her. And number two, just as a campaign tactical issue, this takes you off message, an o cycle now for, you know, probably a couple of days as she tries to clean this up. And she had been enjoying severa in a row of sort of momentum process stories like she's the one on the move. She's got the momentum. You know, people are rallying behind Nikki Haley, Poll numbers going And now you're dealing with this self-inflicted wound here from this gaffe at this town hal So it was an easy one to answer. She flubbed it. It's also an easy one to clean u and just say, I misspoke. This was obviously slavery was the cost of the Civil War. And I want to talk about the fut of this country, etc.. And so we'll see how she handles moving forward. But you don't have that much tim left to continue to, you know, to be off message, off the message you want for a campaign that's drawing to a close. I just want to point this out because back in 2015, there was also an in issue in the same line of questioning. I want to let you listen to what she said back the because it does mirror kind of how she dealt with this which makes me wonder if it was a flub or just trying to figure out, as Corey said, putting yourself in a pretzel, t not to say something that might upset the base voters a flag is living and breathing, and so it represents something I think it should be in any museum setting. I think it should be at Fort Sum I think it should be in those pl of historical settings, not in places that represent all You know, if someone wants to travel to se that's one thing. But it shouldn't be in front of someone's face to where they have to feel So that's when she took the flag the Confederate flag, down after the horrific church shooting that killed so many black Americans there in South Carolina. Is this something that you think that the other candidates like DeSantis potentially or Ramaswamy or Dona will someone pick this up and go or are they just going to stand back and let her deal? Well, my mindset is they'll just going to try to let her deal with this. I don't know what Bakari thinks, but as a as a campaign matter, if I were in their shoes, Bakari I would just let her try to deal There's no reason to pile on tod She's she's made a big mess. It's hard to make it any worse. Yeah. There are a couple of things about Nikki Haley, though. You go back to 2010 when she was running for governo and she was sitting down with I can't recall the organization, but it was a Patriot Organizatio or Confederacy organization here And she was she was having issues with this question as well, trying to appease the questioner And so you see what happened in 2015 as well. And then you get to this. And so you see, she kind of mean doesn't really have a solid answ depending on who the audience is But if I was the is listening to Scott Jennings t I would definitely just let her continue to wallow in this kind of self-inflicted w that she created. Ramaswamy. He can only make it worse for himself and her. I don't think he has the capacit or depth to even deal with issues of race And so I think that the individu who in no telling what Donald Trump will do, you should stay out of it, which means Donald Trump probably will jump headfirst int Bakari Sellers and Scott Jenning Scott's like, I'm done. Like, I can't I can't go there t It's Thursday. We're almost at Friday. I just want to live my life. Thank you, gentlemen, so much for that analysis. Appre
