NEW YORK: Nikki Haley, the former Cabinet member who ran a marathon bid for the Republican nomination against Donald Trump, has urged citizens to vote for him as he is "clearly the better choice" when he is ranged against Kamala Harris.
Her appeal in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday was aimed at centrist voters, who she said "will determine whether the former President returns to the White House".
Haley, who had appealed to moderate Republicans when she ran for the party's nomination, has not been asked by Trump to campaign for him although she had said she was on "standby".
"To that group (of moderate voters), I'll point out that Trump isn't the only one on the ballot. This election isn't a referendum on him. It's a choice between him and Kamala Harris, " she wrote.
She said that the view of Trump of this group of millions is mixed.
She wrote, "They like much of what he did as President and agree with most of his policies. But they dislike his tone and can't condone his excesses, such as his conduct on January 6, 2021" when his supporters rioted and invaded the Capitol when Congress was in the process of certifying President Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election.
Like the voters in the centre, she said, "I don't agree with Trump 100 per cent of the time. But I do agree with him most of the time, and I disagree with Harris nearly all the time. That makes this an easy call."
She added that a second Trump term "wouldn't be perfect" but she agrees with him on most issues.
Among the reasons for voting for him is that "China received serious pushback for the first time in decades" when he was President while Biden-Harris "administration's weakness toward China has done nothing to impede the Communist power's expansion at our expense. This is the world that Biden-Harris failures have given us in four short years."
Harris, who as the US permanent representative to the United Nations, was a member of Trump's cabinet.
When she ran for the Republican nomination she harshly criticised Trump and was the last candidate to drop out and endorse him.
"The world is unsafe under Biden-Harris, and we shouldn't expect that to change under a Harris administration, " she wrote.
"These are enormous policy differences that will affect the lives of every American and much of the world."