Fox’s Howard Kurtz Whacks Nikki Haley Over Civil War Blunder: ‘A Question Any Sixth Grader Could Answer’

Howard Kurtz ripped Nikki Haley for flubbing a simple question about the cause of the Civil War, saying it was a question that a middle schooler could answer.

At a campaign event in New Hampshire on Wednesday, an attendee asked the Republican presidential candidate, “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”

The former South Carolina governor did not handle it well.

“Well don’t come with an easy question,” she said. “I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was gonna run. The freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

After receiving backlash from liberals and conservatives, she accused the questioner of being a Democratic plant. Haley cleaned up her remarks somewhat by acknowledging the central role slavery played in bringing about the Civil War. However, she said, “it was also more than that.”

On Friday’s edition of The Story on Fox News, guest host Rich Edson asked Kurtz about a nine-year-old who confronted Haley about her response while comparing her to 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.

“If you remember John Kerry from 2004, he was negative 10 in 2004,” Edson noted of the boy.

“He wasn’t even alive!” Kurtz exclaimed. “That kid can throw a punch.”

“So, what’s going on here, Howie?” Edson asked.

“Well, look, Nikki Haley is frantically trying to clean up the political mess that she left by dancing around that question in New Hampshire, saying, ‘I was trying to make a different point. Everybody knows that slavery caused the Civil War,'” Kurtz replied. “A question any sixth grader could answer. Instead, she talked about freedom and what people could and couldn’t do. What they could do, Rich, is own other human beings.”

Kurtz went on to say, “The real issue here is that she is afraid of alienating some MAGA voters by talking about slavery.”

Like other GOP candidates not named Donald Trump, Haley is far behind the former president in Republican primary polls.

Watch above via Fox News.