Fox & Friends Defend Haley’s Widely Panned Civil War Comment: ‘She Couldn’t Have Handled It Better’

The panelists on Fox & Friends on Thursday morning defended Nikki Haley’s widely panned comments on the cause of the civil war in which she failed to mention slavery.

Fox hosts Joey Jones, Carley Shimkus, and Griff Jenkins all defended Haley’s remarks and suggested that the individual who asked Haley the question was a Democratic plant. (A suggestion Haley herself made several hours later.) Jones, for his part, noted that Haley was trying to “encapsulate” the nuance surrounding the causes of he Civil War with her answer, but did not actually intend to suggest “slavery wasn’t a big part” of the conflict.

“It was about slavery and a whole bunch of other things. And I think she was trying to encapsulate that. But in on the campaign trail, less in an academic environment, you got to see that coming and you got to be able to answer it better. But I don’t think in any way she was trying to say slavery wasn’t a big part, if not the cause of the civil war,” Jones told viewers.

Meanwhile, Jenkins defended Haley by pointing out that as governor of South Carolina, she removed the Confederate flag from the state house.

“If the implication is that she wouldn’t condemn the evils of slavery, they failed miserably. This is a governor in the wake of the massacre of black residents in the A.M.E. Church in Charleston, out of that disaster and tragedy. She then had the political courage to drop in one of the most southern of all states, the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds, and took immense heat for it. To say that she isn’t willing and doesn’t have the moral fortitude and political courage to stand and condemn the evils of slavery is embarrassing,” he added.

Shimkus suggested that the individual was a potentially a Democrat asking a “gotcha question” and that Haley was “trying to give a more education and philosophical response” by refusing to mention slavery.

Is it a Democrat? Is it somebody who’s supporting Donald Trump or a Republican who doesn’t like Nikki Haley? It clearly was trying to be a gotcha moment for her to take her out of her normal political conversation. She’s going to talk about the economy. She’s going to talk about the border to get this question. To me, this read pretty clear that it was that the answer of slavery is so obvious. That’s the obvious answer. She was talking about big government and other things. Clearly, the answer is slavery. She was trying to give a more education and philosophical response.

Jenkins concluded, “She couldn’t have handled it better. She’s thinking, is this a gotcha question? Are you trying to imply that I won’t condemn the evils of slavery, perhaps in her head? Or is she saying, is this about the actual nuances of what the Civil War was fought over, which is about the economics and politics from the state versus federal government level of issues like slavery.”

Watch the clip above via Fox News.