Haley Sides With Disney and Whacks ‘Sanctimonious’ DeSantis: ‘My Home State Will Happily Accept Your 70,000+ Jobs’
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley took a shot at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, her soon-to-be rival, over his ongoing fight with Disney on Wednesday, accusing him of being “sanctimonious” — a seemingly deliberate reference to former president Donald Trump’s many attacks on DeSantis.
In an appearance on Fox News, Haley addressed the lawsuit filed by Disney against DeSantis on Wednesday by encouraging the company to move Walt Disney World to her home state of South Carolina:
You know, as governor I took care a double-digit unemployment state and I turned it into an economic powerhouse. Businesses were my partners, because if you take care of your businesses, you take care of your economy, your economy takes care of the people and everyone wins. And so that’s the way we dealt with it.
South Carolina was a very anti-woke state, it still is, and if Disney would like to move their hundreds of thousands of jobs to South Carolina and bring the billions of dollars with them I’ll let them know I’ll be happy to meet them in South Carolina and introduce them to the governor and the legislature that would welcome it.
Haley then promoted her answer on Twitter, boasting that “SC’s not woke, but we’re not sanctimonious about it either”:
Hey @Disney, my home state will happily accept your 70,000+ jobs if you want to leave Florida.
We’ve got great weather, great people, and it’s always a great day in South Carolina!
SC’s not woke, but we’re not sanctimonious about it either. pic.twitter.com/uf1PWQjGc5
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) April 26, 2023
Disney has accused DeSantis’s administration of embarking upon “a targeted campaign of government retaliation” after the state took measures to strip the company of special tax advantages and administrative privileges that it had long enjoyed after it expressed its opposition to last year’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, which critics dubbed “Don’t Say Gay.”
Trump has repeatedly referred to the Florida governor — who is widely considered to be the most viable challenger to Trump’s grip on the nomination — as ” Ron DeSanctimonious.”
Haley has pitched herself as a more traditional, pro-business conservative with a less fervent interest in cultural battles, while Trump and his allies have trained their fire on DeSantis for “getting destroyed” by the company.
The former South Carolina govern and U.S. ambassador to the United Nation’s swing at DeSantis reflects not just a difference in values, but the dynamic of the Republican primary; few have shown a willingness to make Trump the focus of their attacks given his pole position.
Watch above via Fox News.
