'I am not going to run': Nikki Haley rules out 2028 presidential bid

(Bloomberg) -- Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley ruled out a 2028 presidential run, even as she criticized the Trump administration for November’s midterm rout that handed Democrats decisive congressional majorities.Nikki Haley served as UN ambassador during Donald Trump's first term. (REUTERS)Haley, who launched a failed bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination that included losing her home state, said her party still must decide its post-Trump direction but insisted she did not intend to join the field for the next contest.“I am not going to run in 2028 because I think the storybook is still yet to be determined,” she said in a Wednesday interview with Bloomberg Television’s Balance of Power. “I am hoping that the Republican Party comes out of this better and stronger than they were before.”Haley took a shot at Vice President JD Vance, a potential 2028 candidate, for calling on the GOP to re-examine the US-Israel relationship in the wake of its midterm losses, which he said were largely due to the war with Iran.“I think he’s completely misguided to say that Israel is the problem,” she said. “The reason that we saw a Democrat wave was the fact that we had inflation and that consumers couldn’t afford groceries, gas, utilities. Interest rates were going up.”Haley, who served as UN ambassador during Donald Trump’s first term, refrained from personally blaming the president for the outcome. Political analysts widely acknowledge his low approval ratings and the Middle East war became a drag on the party, and other Republicans have faulted Trump for backing flawed House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates.It was his “advisers,” Haley said, who did not provide him good counsel. “You don’t have a president with a 34% approval rating tell the American people act like I’m on the ballot. That certainly didn’t help,” she said.Haley praised the Trump administration for securing the US southern border, but said it squandered its advantage on the issue with mass deportations and aggressive conduct by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, which she described as “overreach.”She also pointed to Trump’s tariff policies and the war in Iran, which remains at a stalemate, for exacerbating the high cost of living, an issue voters have overwhelmingly said was their primary concern.“I don’t think Democrats won. I think Republicans lost,” she said. “The American people were trying to tell the Republicans, to tell them they’re misguided and they’re not representing them, and they showed it at the ballot box.”Contrary to Vance, the former governor said more aggressively attacking Iran earlier this year could have brought the conflict to an end sooner.Haley chided Trump and White House officials for pursuing peace talks with the Islamic Republic, calling negotiations a “waste of time.” She suggested the administration should have continued to pursue strikes, including bombing Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected Iranian nuclear site.“We should have made sure that we finished the job,” she said of Iran. “They wouldn’t have been able to gather this kind of leverage now economically that they have, and the American people wouldn’t have suffered."