Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has requested Secret Service protection in response to a flurry of threats and violent incidents at her rallies.
Mrs. Haley acknowledged making the request Monday afternoon in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
“We’ve had multiple issues,” she said after a campaign event in Aiken, South Carolina, in advance of her home state’s upcoming primary. “It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do.”
The Journal did not get an immediate response from the Haley campaign for details about the threats she has received, but there have been some physical confrontations at her rallies.
The Journal cited in its Monday report that a woman tried to rush the stage last week in Columbia, South Carolina, and that there have been “protesters in recent days at her events upset about her support for Ukraine and Israel.”
Her home also has been “swatted” at least once, in which a caller falsely tells police a crime is ongoing at a residence of a disliked person in the hope the police will send a SWAT team and something will go wrong. Mrs. Haley said she herself wasn’t home at the time, though her elderly parents and their caregiver were.
When asked late last week about the earlier incidents at her campaign events, Mrs. Haley said they weren’t unexpected, though she didn’t say then that she would soon be asking for Secret Service assistance.
“When you do something like this, you get threats,” she said. “It’s just the reality.”
She said she has “put a few more bodies around us,” but she would continue retail campaigning.
“At the end of the day, we’re going to go out there and touch every hand, we’re going to answer every question, we’re going to make sure that we are there and doing everything that we need to,” she said.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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