Nikki Haley: “If I were president, China would never have sent a spy balloon”

CHARLESTON, South Carolina — 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told Breitbart News exclusively that if she had been president, China would never have sent a spy balloon in the first place.

Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and later US ambassador to the United Nations under then-President Donald Trump, kicked off her presidential campaign last week and then sat down for an exclusive interview with Breitbart News before traveling to New Hampshire and Iowa to campaign.

“Let’s be clear: if I was president, China would never have sent a ball,” Haley told Breitbart News. “The reason China sent a balloon is they saw us fall in Afghanistan, then saw us let Russia into Crimea, then saw Russia invade Ukraine. America really didn’t nothing done. They saw Biden fall over himself to get into the Iran deal. So they say let’s go. How weak do we look to make China feel at home? comfortable sending a balloon across our border? What took Biden so long? They should have captured it before it even entered. We have to go to NORAD and say ‘that are you doing? Are you supposed to see this? We have to hold China accountable. They don’t have a pass for this.

When asked what she would specifically do as president to hold China accountable, Haley told Breitbart News it was time for leaders from both parties to start treating China differently at all levels. She said the United States must secure supply chains and prevent China from stealing intellectual property and creating influence operations at American universities.

“We have to start treating China differently. Republicans and Democrats have thought for too long that if we were nice to China, they would want to be like us,” Haley said. “They don’t want to be like us. They are communists. They look at the west like demons. They regard the West as a great evil. They want to make our way. What we need to do is stop funding for universities, we need to stop intellectual property theft, we need to beef up our military so they know we mean business, and we need to make sure they know when you pass a balloon across our borders there’s hell to pay. We need to start making sure our supply chain is America-centric and ally-centric. We don’t need to trade with China, especially when it comes to national security items.

In her launch speech, Haley compared the Chinese Communist Party to the old Soviet Union that fell after a decades-long Cold War. “In the America I see, Communist China won’t just lose,” Haley said in his speech. “Like the Soviet Union before it, Communist China will end up on the ash heap of history.”

When asked during the interview with Breitbart News if she considers the conflict between the United States and China a second Cold War, Haley said it depends on what China does.

“It’s up to China. What we need to do is let China know what we expect from them,” Haley said. “If we let them know what we expect of them, they won’t play with us. The problem is, they can say Biden isn’t even paying attention. Allowing Americans to look up at the sky and see a Chinese spy balloon is the biggest embarrassment our country has faced in a long time. This is very revealing for the international world. We have to fix it.