Haley knocks Ramaswamy over support for reducing aid to Israel

Republican presidential candidate and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley criticized fellow GOP hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy on Monday over comments that he made late last week expressing support for cutting financial aid to Israel in a few years. 

Ramaswamy said late last week in an interview on the Rumble show “Stay Free with Russell Brand” that he wanted to expand the Abraham Accords, in which Israel normalized relations with a few of its Arab neighbors, so that additional aid for Israel “won’t be necessary” by 2028, when a current package is set to expire. 

Haley said in a release that Ramaswamy is “completely wrong” to call for ending the “special bond” between the United States and Israel. 

“Support for Israel is both the morally right and strategically smart thing to do. Both countries are stronger and safer because of our ironclad friendship. As president, I will never abandon Israel,” she said. 

Haley, who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Trump administration, has repeatedly emphasized her support for Israel throughout her public career, including as governor of South Carolina. She regularly defended the relationship between the U.S. and Israel as ambassador to other member countries of the U.N. 

Ramaswamy said during the interview that he thinks the U.S.-Israel relationship has been in the country’s interests, and he believes in abiding by commitments that the U.S. has already made, but he wants Israel to be more incorporated into the rest of the Middle East region. 

He said he wants to negotiate an “Abraham Accords 2.0” to include countries such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Indonesia to “get Israel on its own two feet.” 

The original accords included the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, with Sudan and Morocco following soon after. 

“I want to get Israel to the place where it is negotiated back into the infrastructure of the rest of the Middle East. We should not be worried about holding one nation or one region hostage over one particular question relating to Palestine,” Ramaswamy said. 

He argued that expanding the accords is “good for us such that come 2028 that additional aid won’t be necessary in order to still have the kind of stability that we’d actually have in the Middle East by having Israel more integrated in with its partners.” 

Haley argued in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that Ramaswamy’s proposal is part of a “pattern” with him of policies that make the U.S. less safe. 

Haley’s criticism comes as she and Ramaswamy and several other GOP candidates will face each other for the first GOP presidential debate Wednesday.