Content warning: extremely racist nonsense.
Recently announced presidential hopeful and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is a diehard conservative and personally, I wish she would crawl into an area without cell service and be quiet. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay for Ann Coulter—an iconic gross person and raging bigot—to verbally assault her with racist intent the way she did this week on a Trump-based podcast.
During her appearance on a podcast called “The Mark Simone Show,” Coulter made several vicious and openly racist remarks against Haley, who is Indian American and was born in the United States to immigrant parents.
“Why don’t you go back to your own country?” Coulter said of the U.S. native. And later, “This is my country, lady,” she said. “I’m not an American Indian, and I don’t like them taking down all the monuments.” Coulter was speaking of a well-publicized incident in 2015 where, after much back and forth, Haley had the confederate flag removed from its place of honor on the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse, which was the last statehouse in the country to fly it.
The move came only after Dylann Roof, who used the flag as a symbol of his racist beliefs, shot and killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Haley signed a bill removing the flag after calling for its removal a few months before. “Some divisions are bigger than a flag,” she said at an appearance with her home state’s two Republican senators. “We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer. The fact that people are choosing to use it as a sign of hate is something we cannot stand.”
Coulter, who was more popular in the 2010s, seemed to be trying to say the most racially violent things she could think of in order to get attention and stay relevant on “The Mark Simone Show.” “[Haley’s] candidacy did remind me that I need to immigrate to India so I can demand they start taking down parts of their history,” she said. “What’s with the worshipping of the cows?” She asked apropos of nothing. “They’re all starving over there. Did you know they have a rat temple, where they worship rats?”
Coulter, a fierce supporter of Trump and his bigoted platform, came off as much worse than culturally insensitive, she sounded xenophobic, purposely intent on misunderstanding and hating anyone even slightly different from her, and like a total asshole. Which is very on-brand for her.
Currently, Haley is Former President Donald Trump’s only official opponent in the leadup to the Republican presidential primary which will be held a year from now, in February of 2024. However, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is widely expected to announce his candidacy soon.
(featured image: Jason Kempin/Getty Images for Politicon)
