Former President Donald Trump refuted opponent Nikki Haley's claim that she is a better general election candidate to compete against President Biden, as voters head to the polls in a variety of states on Super Tuesday.
"It's a lie. She knows it's a lie," Trump told Lawrence Jones and Brian Kilmeade during a "Fox & Friends" phone interview Tuesday, downplaying polls that have shown Haley performing better versus Biden.
"We are winning against Biden in every single poll, and everybody knows it, whether it's the New York Times, whether it's any of the polls that have been taken over the last three months. So she is misrepresenting that fact and it's fine. It's not going to matter because I think we're going to win every state tonight."
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His remarks come after Haley suggested she has a better chance to oust Biden than Trump does during a campaign event on Monday, despite only having one primary victory under her belt.
"If you look at any of the general election polls, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are even. I think there was a Fox poll today, he was up by two. That's still margin of error," Haley said during a campaign event in Fort Worth, Texas. "Between last week's poll. In this week's poll, I defeat Joe Biden by up to 18 points."
Trump doubled down on Haley pivoting on her previous pledge to not run against Trump, warning there is "no path" to victory for her 2024 campaign.
"She said she'd never run against me and she did. She said she beat Ron DeSantis… in Iowa, and she didn't," Trump said, adding that the party must unite to defeat Biden.
"I want everybody to come together. We're going to have a unified party because our real opponent happens to be named Biden, and he's a disaster, as I said, the worst president in our country. He's destroying our country."
"There's no path to Nikki. I wish Nikki the best, but she stood up many times, said, I'd never run against our president. He was a great president. I would never run – and then she ran," he continued. "Those things you don't like to see. You like to see people that are truthful."
Haley responded to Trump's criticism, doubling down on the suggestion that she is a better candidate to secure Republican victories up and down the ticket. She insisted her decision to run against him is "not personal."
"I campaigned for a lot of governors and a lot of House and Senate members, and after we lost all of those elections, that's when we decided to jump in because we lost in 2018," Haley said later during "Fox & Friends."
"We lost in 2020. We lost in 2022. I was just in Michigan, and since Donald Trump became president in 2016, they lost the governor's mansion. They lost the state House. They lost the state Senate. Same thing in Minnesota. I went to Colorado. No Republican has won more than 45% statewide since Donald Trump became president. I went to Virginia, the exact same thing. Glenn Youngkin was able to win, but that's because he ran it on his own and kept Donald Trump at arm's length."
"This is not personal. This is about the fact that we have to win," she continued. "We can want to change the country all day long. But if we can't win an election, we can't do any of that."
"Fox & Friends" co-host Ainsley Earhardt pressed Haley on her previous pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.
"That's not a decision I have to make today," Haley said. "The convention isn't until July. We've got 16 states voting today, and so we want those 16 states to vote… I haven't heard [Trump] pledge to me that he would support me if I won. So I don't know why I have to go and pledge to him that I would support him if I won."
"I get to do what I want to do, Ainsley," she continued. "If he refused to sign the pledge, I don't have to go forward, but I'll make that decision on my own."
