Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has applied for Secret Service protection because of increasing threats she has received on the campaign trail, Haley’s team confirmed to Fox News on Monday.
The former two-term South Carolina governor who later served as U.N. ambassador in former President Donald Trump’s administration is Trump’s last remaining major rival for the 2024 GOP nomination.
Haley discussed the request for protection in an interview Monday afternoon with The Wall Street Journal.
“We’ve had multiple issues,” the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador said after a campaign event in Aiken, South Carolina. “It’s not going to stop me from doing what I need to do.”
Haley was asked at a news conference in Columbia, S.C. late last week about increased levels of security at her events.
“When you do something like this, you get threats,” she told reporters. “It’s just the reality.”
Haley mentioned the need to “put a few more bodies around us,” but that it hadn’t affected her 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 added.
Hours after Haley spoke to reporters, a heckler was removed from her campaign event in Hilton Head, South Carolina.