'America can do better than Donald Trump': Haley seizes on E. Jean Carroll judgment

After a New York jury arrived at its verdict that former President Donald Trump would have to pay writer E. Jean Carroll $83.3 million for defamation, Trump's last remaining rival in the Republican presidential primary seized on the opportunity to launch an attack on her opponent.

"Donald Trump wants to be the presumptive Republican nominee and we’re talking about $83 million in damages," former UN ambassador Nikki Haley wrote on X (formerly Twitter). "We're not talking about fixing the border. We're not talking about tackling inflation. America can do better than Donald Trump and Joe Biden."

Haley's tweet comes as the former South Carolina governor has been campaigning in her home state ahead of its February 24 presidential primary. She's currently more than 30 points behind the former president according to RealClearPolitics' polling average. All of the Palmetto State's 29 at-large delegates will go to the candidate with the most votes in the winner-take-all contest, meaning Haley has a lot of ground to cover in the next month if she hopes to keep her campaign competitive.

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The former ambassador has sought to carve out a unique lane for herself as she runs against a candidate her party is treating as an incumbent. Haley's tweet about the E. Jean Carroll judgment is the latest gesture to appeal to women voters already put off with the Republican Party following the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.

While Trump cast his appointment of three conservative justices to the Court and its subsequent overturning of Roe as a plus for his campaign, Haley has taken a different approach. Haley recently called on her fellow Republicans to "stop demonizing the issue" of abortion and make concessions in order to be more palatable to voters.

"We’re going to have to have a compromise to make anything happen," Haley said last week.

The judgment of $18.3 million in compensatory damages and $65 million for punitive damages against Trump far exceeds what Carroll's attorneys were asking for, and is just one of possibly two judgments the former president may face before February. Judge Arthur Engoron is aiming to issue a decision in New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud trial against the Trump Organization. She's seeking $370 million in "disgorgement" attributed to artificially inflated assessments of Trump's real estate assets.

READ MORE: 'Everything’s on the table': Carroll lawyer not ruling out another lawsuit against Trump