Nikki Haley Says She Was Showing ‘A Lot of Restraint’ When She Called Vivek Ramaswamy ‘Scum’

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley doubled down on her declaration that rival Vivek Ramaswamy is “scum” at Wednesday night’s GOP primary debate during a Thursday morning appearance on America’s Newsroom.

“You’re just scum,” Haley told Ramaswamy after he noted that despite her attacks on him over his use of TikTok, her daughter also uses the Chinese-owned app.

“You might want to take care of your family first,” taunted Ramaswamy.

Haley responded to Ramaswamy’s attacks during her conversation with Fox News’ Bill Hemmer and Dana Perino on Thursday, even remarking that she had shown “a lot of restraint” with him.

“You know, it’s just, this is a serious time in our country and this is not the time that you need to have, you know, these personal hits. My daughter’s 25-year-old, we’ve got big issues happening in the world,” began Haley while reflecting on last night’s exchange.

“We’ve got threats facing us around, you know, at the United States and our friends and we have to take that seriously. And look, even though it was a personal shot and it was a shot that wasn’t necessary, I think the bigger point is there are big differences between me and Ramaswamy. You know, he doesn’t think we should be helping Israel. He thinks that we should let Putin have Ukraine. He’s fine with using Taiwan until we have all the chips we need and then he’ll give it out,” she continued before arguing that his attack “says more about him than it does about me.”

“Not continue on the personal here, but the microphone caught the words. We heard you say ‘You are scum.’ Do you want to continue with that today? Do you feel the same way?” inquired Hemmer.

“I mean, Bill, that was showing a lot of restraint, that’s all I’ll say. That was showing a lot of restraint,” replied Haley.

Watch above via Fox News.