MILWAUKEE – One day after Donald Trump was formally nominated as the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee and named Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, Trump’s final rival during the presidential primaries takes center stage at the Republican National Convention.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who served as U.N. ambassador in the Trump administration, will speak at the convention on Tuesday, multiple sources familiar with the decision confirmed to Fox News over the weekend.
As of last week, Haley wasn’t invited to speak at the convention and wasn’t planning on attending the four-day confab, which is being held in the largest city of swing state Wisconsin.
But following Saturday’s attempted assassination attempt on Trump at a rally in western Pennsylvania, where the former president was visibly bloodied after a bullet grazed his ear and where one spectator was killed and two others critically injured, the GOP quickly united around their standard-bearer. And as part of that push for unity, Haley was invited to speak at the convention.
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Former President Trump gestures with a bloodied face after shots rang out during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, 2024. (Reuters/Brendan McDermid)
A source with knowledge of Haley’s speech told Fox News that she’ll “address voters who are uncertain about voting for President Trump and make the case for why she is voting for him.”
Haley launched her presidential campaign in February last year, becoming the first major candidate to challenge Trump, who had announced his candidacy three months earlier. She was the final rival to Trump, battling the former president in a contentious two-candidate showdown from the New Hampshire primary in late January through Super Tuesday in early March.
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Haley announced that she was suspending her White House campaign on March 6, the day after Trump swept 14 of 15 GOP nominating contests on Super Tuesday.
As she departed the race, Haley made it clear that she intended to keep speaking out. And Haley continued to grab up to 20% of the vote in Republican presidential primaries in the months after she dropped out.
Nikki Haley announces she is suspending her campaign, in Charleston, South Carolina, March 6, 2024. (Reuters/Brian Snyder)
In late May, in her first public comments since announcing the end of her 2024 campaign, Haley said she would vote for Trump.
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Haley won a total of 97 delegates during the Republican presidential primaries. And last week, Haley released all of her delegates and urged them to support Trump.
Asked last week in an interview with Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade about Haley, Trump said “there was a lot of bad blood there, and she stayed too long.”
Pointing to another former nomination rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who left the race three days ahead of the New Hampshire primary, Trump said, “DeSantis left right after Iowa. She should have left right after Iowa.”