Haley Takes on Trump Juggernaut, Suggests She's Strongest General Election Candidate

ALTOONA, Iowa – Watching former South Carolina Governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at an Iowa town hall meeting, she appears to be a presidential candidate on the rise.

As the audience applauds, she tells the crowd, "We're super excited!"

She added, "Get used to this face. I'm going to fight for you. I'm going to fight for every single person's vote because we have a country to save."

Haley has been steadily climbing in the polls, picking up key endorsements from the Koch Foundation and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, plus bringing along new converts.

Iowa voter Sara Macias declared, "I'm so impressed with her – so impressed."

CBN News spoke with Haley after her town hall in Altoona, Iowa, this week, and she's feeling good.

"We got one more fella to catch up to and we're moving," Haley told us.

Iowa has typically been a state that breaks late, and there's drama right up until the end, but this time around, Haley and the other candidates are up against the Trump juggernaut. He's up by more than 30 points here. It's led to a chorus of MAGA conservatives saying it's time to coalesce around the clear front-runner.

Instead, Haley wants voters to look past the GOP primary races for the party nomination.

"You look at the general election polls – Trump and Biden are pretty much head to head. On a good day, he might be up two or four points. I'm up 17 points." she stated.

And she's hoping voters look at another difference.

"With me there's no drama, there are no vendettas," she said at a rally. "There's no whining. It's just work."

 "Rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him," she said of Trump.

"We can't be a country in disarray, and have a world on fire, and make it through four years of chaos. We can't," she exhorted.

Those strong words against the clear frontrunner have critics lining up.

We asked Haley, "You've heard the criticisms from the MAGA Folks – you know, that you're you're a war-mongering neocon, you're a globalist, you're establishment."

Haley responded, "How can you call me establishment when I was the Tea Party candidate that ran for governor? How can you say that I'm a warmonger when I'm the wife of a combat veteran who's deployed right now? My goal is always to prevent war so that my husband and so many members of the military never have to fight."

Haley is receiving incoming from all sides. Another challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, put out the "Real Nikki Haley" website.

At this week's town hall, she let voters know he's being untruthful about her record.

"Don't sit there and lie about me," she challenged. "If you've got to lie about someone to win, you don't deserve to win."

While winning will be an uphill battle, she's hoping for a strong showing in Iowa and a big night the following week in New Hampshire. A new CBS poll shows that she's cut Trump's lead there to 15 points. And now, Trump's super PAC is about to air campaign ads against Haley.

Polling also shows Haley has an interesting challenge ahead. While doing well with moderates, she must convince a more strident base that she doesn't move to the center on key issues.

In our interview, she didn't hold back – first on immigration: "We need to close the border. If there are certain areas, we have to build a wall or do whatever we do it."

We asked, "Like maybe toughening the illegal immigration asylum process?"

She responded, "David, they're not vetting anybody right now, and to me, honestly, stop the whole thing until you can figure out what's going on. Not one person should be coming into our country until we know that they are being vetted, and we know exactly what's happening."

As for refugees from Gaza, she says no way.

We asked, "What's America's role in this? I mean, Egypt doesn't want to take them. Jordan doesn't want to take them. And what do you think about America?"

She answered, "Isn't that very telling that they don't want to take them?"

We replied, "Absolutely. So I'm assuming the position, therefore, is America should not take them either?"

Haley responded, "Absolutely not. They should go to Hamas-loving countries: Iraq, Qatar, Turkey, those three countries, they can go to that."

And regarding Israel's war against Hamas and growing pro-Palestinian protests, Haley has direct words for colleges allowing anti-Semitic conduct on campus.

"We have to go to every university and say you either take foreign money or you take American money," she insisted, "but the days of taking both are over and get that infiltration out of our universities."

As for social issues, she tells CBN News the government needs to make better decisions.

"I think there should be federal involvement, that you should not have any gender-altering anything done to a child before the age of 18."

She continued, "Across the board, I don't think that should ever happen. And that includes any gender-changing drugs, nothing that's going to permanently harm them."

This plays well with the base, and with the Trump train steaming along, what would she say to a vice presidential slot?

I asked her, "Ron DeSantis has ruled it out – says 'No way, I'm not gonna do it.'  Are you going to rule it out?"

She replied, "I don't play for a second."

"You're not going to rule it out?"

"It's not even a conversation," she said. "And it doesn't matter what candidate wants me to answer it. I don't play for a second. I don't know what more I can say. And then to get them to understand that."

What she wants voters to understand is that Nikki Haley isn't going away and plans to have a lot more to say before all is said and done.

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