Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has blamed rival Donald Trump for the GOP’s disastrous recent run in Congress, which saw the House fail to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over the state of illegal immigration at the US southern border and the collapse of a major funding bill last Tuesday.
“Republicans had a really bad day,” Ms Haley told a crowd in Newberry, South Carolina, while campaigning on Saturday afternoon ahead of her home state’s primary on 24 February.
Also citing an appeals court finding that Mr Trump was not immune to prosecution last week and the news that Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel could be forced out on his say so, the candidate said: “The reality is chaos follows him. On that day of all those losses, he had his fingerprints all over it.”
"What is happening?" Ms Haley asked. “We can’t be a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won’t survive it.”
Over the weekend, she and Mr Trump were embroiled a further argument after the latter questioned her husband’s absence from the campaign trail.
Major Michael Haley is currently serving his country overseas.