Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Sunday there is “nothing good or decent” about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, days after former president Donald Trump congratulated the dictator for the country’s admission to the World Health Organization’s executive board.
“I mean Kim Jong-un is a thug, and if you see what he has done to his own people in North Korea — when money went to North Korea, it didn’t go to feed their people, it went to feed their nuclear program,” Haley said during a CNN town hall in Iowa on Sunday. “There’s no reason we should ever congratulate the fact that they are now vice chair of the World Health Organization.”
Haley went on to say that the WHO is a “farce to start with, we saw that during Covid.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper, who moderated the town hall, pressed Haley to say whether she didn’t like Trump congratulating the North Korean leader and whether she didn’t like his attitude toward Kim when she worked as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.
“I don’t think we ever should congratulate dictators,” Haley said. “Congratulate our friends. Don’t congratulate our enemies, it emboldens them when we do that.”
“Congratulations to Kim Jung Un!” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social on Friday.
Others in the West condemned the decision.
“What this means is that one of the world’s most horrific regimes is now a part of a group that sets and enforces the standards and norms for the global governance of health care. It is an absurd episode for a key U.N. agency that is in much need of self-reflection and reform,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based human rights group.
During his time in office, Trump met with Kim three times in an effort to improve relations between the U.S. and North Korea.
Since then, during Biden’s presidency, tensions have risen, with the U.S. condemning North Korea just last week for attempting to launch its first military spy satellite using ballistic missile technology.
Trump’s former national-security adviser John Bolton told CNN last month that while Trump believes that foreign leaders, especially adversaries, “hold him in good regard” and that he has a “good relationship with Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un,” the “exact opposite is true.”
“I have been in those rooms with him when he’s met with those leaders. I believe they think he’s a laughing fool,” Bolton said.
Trump halted funding to the WHO during his presidency and accused the organization of botching its Covid response and helping China cover up the threat that Covid posed. President Biden later recommitted to the organization and ended the funding freeze.
During the town hall on Sunday, Tapper also asked Haley whether she stands by her earlier comments that Trump “let us down” with his actions around the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot and he “went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Haley said Sunday: “He thinks it was a beautiful day, I think it was a terrible day. I’ll always stand by that.”
The town hall covered a variety of topics, including Haley’s position on abortion. The former South Carolina governor said she would approach the issue by trying to find consensus and suggested no Republican president would realistically have the votes needed in Congress to pass a federal abortion ban.
“So if you look at it from that standpoint, don’t let anybody in the media, don’t let any political party tell you that a Republican president can ban abortion laws in our country because they can’t any more than a Democrat president can ban our state laws. So, what can we do with consensus?” she said.
“I think we can all agree on, banning late-term abortions. I think we can all agree on encouraging adoptions and making sure those foster kids feel more love — not less. I think we can agree on doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion, shouldn’t have to perform them. I think we can agree on the fact that contraception should be accessible. And I think we can all come together and say any woman that has an abortion shouldn’t be jailed or given the death penalty. Can’t we start there?”
She declined to say whether she would sign a six-week abortion ban if it did make it to her desk as president, or if she thinks there’s a national consensus for a 15-week ban.
“I will answer that when you ask Kamala and Biden if they agree to 37 weeks, 38 weeks,” she said.
Haley did take a stance on another policy specific, however. She said she would oppose “red flag” gun laws that allow courts to temporarily seize firearms from individuals who are believed to be a danger to themselves or others.
“I don’t trust government to deal with red flag laws,” Haley said. “I don’t trust that they will, that they won’t take them away from people who rightfully deserve to have them. Because you’ve got someone else judging whether someone should have a gun or not. It is a constitutional right that people can protect and defend themselves.”