When Nikki Haley opens her presidential campaign on Wednesday she will be joined by Cindy Warmbier, whose son died days after he was released from North Korean prison in 2017.
While many American voters wait to see how the Republican primary shakes out before picking a candidate, Warmbier is already all in.
Warmbier credits Haley with giving her the strength to continue fighting against the North Korean regime after the death of her 22-year-old son, Otto. She will tell her story on stage in Charleston, South Carolina, just minutes before Haley launches her presidential campaign.
“I said, ‘It’s impossible to fight North Korea,’” Warmbier said of her conversation with the then-US ambassador to the United Nations when they met in 2018.
“Well, you have to,” Warmbier recalls Haley telling her. “She says, ‘You have to stand up to these bullies, these bad guys, because if you don’t they view it as a sign of weakness.’”
Warmbier had admired Haley’s determination when it came to North Korea sanctions and asked for the meeting when she was in Washington, DC, for then-President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.
“It took someone like Nikki Haley to light the fire under me,” Warmbier said in an exclusive interview with CNN. “She took me out of that survival mode and put me in a fighter mode.”
The anecdote underscores Haley’s fierce approach to authoritarians, which is a part of the former US diplomat’s identity that she wants to highlight as she introduces herself as a presidential candidate.
“China and Russia are on the march. They all think we can be bullied, kicked around. You should know this about me: I don’t put up with bullies and when you kick back it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels,” Haley said in a video announcing her 2024 White House bid on Tuesday.
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