Nikki Haley Says Trump Can't Be Trusted To Protect The Troops

GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley is attacking Donald Trump for his history of disparaging military service members after he cracked jokes about her deployed husbands absence.

Haley, whose husband Michael Haley left for a yearlong Army deployment in June, made the rounds Monday saying Trump is unqualified for the presidency because he cant be trusted to protect American troops.

If you dont respect our military, how should we think youre going to respect them when it comes to times of war, and prevent war and keep them from going? Haley said Monday on CNN . If you dont have respect for our military and our veterans, God help us all if thats the case.

She made similar remarks to NBC News , saying: He showed that with that kind of disrespect for the military, hes not qualified to be the president of the United States, because I dont trust him to protect them.

The former United Nations ambassadors offensive follows remarks Trump made during a rally Saturday mocking her husbands absence on the campaign trail. 

Wheres your husband? Oh, hes away. Hes away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? Hes gone! Trump said.

Haley also called out Trumps own lack of military service.

The most harm hes ever come across is whether a golf ball hits him on a golf cart, she said during a Monday gaggle to reporters in South Carolina. And youre gonna go and mock our men and women in the military? I dont care what party youre in, thats not okay.

Military deployment is something you know nothing about, she said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, directed at Trump.

In another post on X, Haley reminded her followers of multiple media reports in 2020 alleging that Trump referred to American service members who died in World War I as suckers and losers  during conversation with staff. Trump denied this.

The former president has a long record of speaking poorly about service members. In 2015, he called the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who was held for 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, not a war hero , and added, I like people who werent captured.

While on the campaign trail in 2016, Trump managed to insult both Gold Star families the relatives of people who died in the Iraq War and Muslims in one fell swoop when he implied it was a womans Islamic faith that prevented her from speaking about her fallen soldier son at that years Democratic National Convention.

If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably, maybe she wasnt allowed to have anything to say. You tell me, Trump said at the time of Ghazala Khan, whose husband, Khizr Khan, spoke at the DNC about their late son, Army Capt. Humayun S.M. Khan.

Ghazala Khan later gave an interview saying it was too painful for her to speak about her son because of her continued grief.

[I] was very nervous, because I cannot see my sons picture, I cannot even come in the room where his pictures are, she said of her appearance at the DNC.

Haleys suggestion that Trump is unqualified for the presidency comes amidst a legal showdown over whether hes unqualified to appear on the ballot because of another reason. The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments last week over a lower courts decision to remove Trump from the Colorado primary ballot because he allegedly violated the 14th Amendments clause on inciting insurrection. The court is expected to fast-track their decision and issue a ruling soon .