Republican Nikki Haley rants about trans women and Dylan Mulvaney on 2024 campaign trail

US presidential candidate Nikki Haley is targeting the trans community in her 2024 campaign, and has blamed trans visibility for teenage suicide ideation, misgendered trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney and attacked trans women in sport – all in under 60 seconds.

Haley is running for the Republican candidacy in the 2024 presidential race against Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump.

She made an appearance at a “Politics & Eggs” event at Saint Anselm College, in Manchester, New Hampshire — a regular event held at the college to allow local business leaders to engage with politicians, candidates and others involved the politics.

A clip of her talk, shared on YouTube by The Recount, shows her brief, bitter tirade against trans people, where she states: “We’ve got biological boys playing in girls’ sports – it is the women’s issue of our time. Where is everyone?

“My daughter ran track in high school, I wouldn’t even know how to have that conversation with her. How doe we get our girls comfortable with biological boys in their locker room? It’s not okay.”

She quickly followed up with an attack on trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, saying: “Everybody know about Dylan Mulvaney? Bud Light, right? Make no mistake: that is a guy, dressed up like a girl, making fun of women. Women don’t act like that.

“Yet, everybody’s wondering why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year? What are we doing to them? We’re supposed to be growing strong girls, confident girls, not ones being made fun of.”

According to a report The Daily Beast, most of her talk was poorly received by the audience.

Who is Nikki Haley?

Haley has been in US politics for almost 20 years. She was a member of South Carolina’s state House of Representatives from 2005 to 2011, before being elected the state’s governor – a position she held until early 2017 when she was appointed US ambassador to the UN under then-president Donald Trump.

She’s not considered a frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race for the Republican candidate nomination.

However, she has gained recognition by being the first to announce her run against Trump for the candidacy, launching her campaign in February 2023. Trump confirmed he would run in November 2022.

Haley was has kept anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric at the top of her agenda – including taking aim at newly-announced (but long expected) candidate Ron DeSantis by saying his reviled ‘Don’t Say Gay‘ law doesn’t “go far enough”.

Since then, DeSantis has expanded the anti-LGBTQ+ law and introduced six others in Florida.