Nikki Haley to take the holidays to assess a 2024 presidential run

Former SC Gov. and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said that she was taking the Christmas holidays to evaluate a 2024 presidential run Tuesday at an event in her alma mater, Clemson University.

"We are taking the holidays to kind of look at what the situation is. But I have said I've never lost a race. I'm not going to start now," Haley said. "If we decide to get into it, we'll put 1,000% and we'll finish it.”

Haley, who had last year told the Associated Press that she would bow out if Donald Trump ran again, has remained mum about Trump's third bid for the White House.

Instead, she has used her appearances at various events before and after the midterm elections to pepper the sphere with messages implying the intention of having a female conservative in the White House.

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For instance, before she got on the stage Tuesday, an introductory video about Haley used clips from her appearances at the recent Republican Jewish Coalition event in Vegas, as well as the Christians United for Israel summit earlier this year.

"Sometimes, it takes a woman," Haley had said at the Christians United for Israel Summit over the summer.

In Vegas earlier this month, Haley criticized the Biden administration's plans to reconvene the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and said the next president would "shred it on her first day in office."

Nationally, Haley is up against big GOP heavyweights such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose performance in the state has shot him to prominence against Trump's polarizing popularity as a probable GOP presidential candidate.

But in her home state, a recent Nov. Winthrop poll showed a close contest between Haley and Trump, if Haley chose to run.

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SC Republican voters, about 45% of the ones polled, favored Trump. However, about 37% picked Haley −an eight percentage point difference that is the first indication of Haley's regional influence in a state that hosts the "first in the South" primaries and whose winner has usually made it to the White House.

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Nikki Haley to take the holidays to assess a 2024 presidential run