WAUKEE, Iowa — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley differentiated herself from former President Donald Trump with her response toward a sixth-grader, Ahmir Jolliff, being killed by a 17-year-old last week in Perry, Iowa.
During a campaign event in nearby Waukee after a snowstorm swept through the state, Haley praised the first responders to the school shooting, telling the crowd, “They did everything right.”
“We’ve got some law enforcement officers here that were on the ground when that happened,” she said Tuesday. “Every one of us, whenever we turn on the TV and we see something like that, our hearts fall. It doesn’t matter what state it’s in. It’s the fact that something like this happened again.”
Haley, who did not take questions during her only public appearance scheduled for Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s one-on-one debate against Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), reflected on the 2016 school shooting death of first-grader Jacob Hall in her home state of South Carolina.
“I will say this over and over again until I’m in the White House: We have got to deal with the cancer that is mental health in this country,” Haley said. “One in 3 people have a mental health issue. Eighty percent of mass shooters are in a mental health crisis when something happens. We have to start making sure they have help.”
“We don’t have enough therapists,” she added. “We don’t have enough mental health treatment centers. We don’t have enough addiction centers. And if you’re lucky enough to get one of those three, insurance doesn’t cover it. It is time for us to seriously take care of mental health.”
Trump spent last weekend in Iowa before next Monday’s caucuses, the opening nominating contest of the 2024 Republican primary.
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“I want to send our support and our deepest sympathies to the victims and families touched by the terrible school shooting yesterday in Perry, Iowa,” Trump said Friday in Sioux Center. “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But we have to get over it. We have to move forward.”
Trump’s perceived lack of empathy is one reason many Republicans in Iowa are considering caucusing for another candidate, though the former president maintains, on average, a more than 30 percentage point advantage over his closest opponents, DeSantis and Haley.