Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley finally broke her silence on Thursday about the latest indictment against former President Donald Trump.

The Republican presidential candidate, who is in a three-way tie for third place in the GOP primary, took a different tune than the other non-Trump candidates in the top five.

“Unlike the other candidates, I didn’t rush out with a statement yesterday on Trump’s indictment for one simple reason — like most Americans, I’m tired of commenting on every Trump drama,” Haley said on the “Good Morning New Hampshire with Jack Heath” radio show.

“I’ve lost track of whether this indictment is the third or fourth or the fifth,” Haley continued. “We should be focusing on how to stop China. We should be focusing on how to close the border. We need to be reversing Bidenomics. Putting a 77-year-old former president in prison doesn’t do any of that. We’ve got to move on already.”

Haley’s remarks come after the former president was charged and arraigned this week by a federal grand jury on charges of Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, Obstruction of and Attempt to Obstruct an Official Proceeding, and Conspiracy Against Rights.

The other three non-Trump candidates in the top five — Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), and former Vice President Mike Pence — all issued statements shortly after Trump was charged.

“As President, I will end the weaponization of government, replace the FBI Director, and ensure a single standard of justice for all Americans,” said DeSantis. “While I’ve seen reports, I have not read the indictment. I do, though, believe we need to enact reforms so that Americans have the right to remove cases from Washington, D.C., to their home districts.”

“Washington, D.C., is a ‘swamp’ and it is unfair to have to stand trial before a jury that is reflective of the swamp mentality,” he added. “One of the reasons our country is in decline is the politicization of the rule of law. No more excuses—I will end the weaponization of the federal government.”

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Scott said in a statement to The Daily Wire: “I remain concerned about the weaponization of Biden’s DOJ and its immense power used against political opponents. What we see today are two different tracks of justice. One for political opponents and another for the son of the current president. We’re watching Biden’s DOJ continue to hunt Republicans, while protecting Democrats.”

Pence took a shot at Trump in his response, saying: “Today’s indictment serves as an important reminder: anyone who puts himself over the Constitution should never be President of the United States.”

Pence continued:

I will have more to say about the government’s case after reviewing the indictment. The former president is entitled to the presumption of innocence but with this indictment, his candidacy means more talk about January 6th and more distractions.

As Americans, his candidacy means less attention paid to Joe Biden’s disastrous economic policies afflicting millions across the United States and to the pattern of corruption with Hunter.

Our country is more important than one man. Our Constitution is more important than any one man’s career. On January 6th, Former President Trump demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution. I chose the Constitution and I always will.

As your president, I will not yield an inch in defending America, our people, or our values, and I promise you: I will do so in a way consistent with my oath to the Constitution and the character and decency of the American people. We will restore a threshold of integrity and civility in public life so we can bring real solutions to the challenges plaguing our nation.

The New York Times/Siena poll, which is rated by FiveThirtyEight as the most accurate poll in the nation, found in its most recent survey that Trump remains the frontrunner in the GOP primary race with his only serious challenger being DeSantis, who sits at 17%. After DeSantis, Pence, Haley, and Scott all sit at 3%. The remaining candidates all sit at 2% or less.

While Trump appears to be dominant at the moment with just over half of the vote, the poll showed that nearly half of the respondents who chose Trump — 46% — say that they are “considering other candidates.”

Battle of the Bulge veteran Vincent Speranza died on Wednesday, August 2, 2023. He was 98-years-old.

Speranza was just a kid from Hell’s Kitchen when he enlisted in the Army, and after attending Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia, he was assigned to the 501st Parachute Infantry under the 101st Airborne Division.

“We were just a bunch of kids, right out of high school, a lot of us like me, children of immigrant families,” Speranza said in a 2017 interview. “Our parents were so proud of this country. My father was a patriot like you wouldn’t believe. They expected their sons to defend the country, and we did.”

Speranza earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for Valor, but it was a small favor he did for a wounded friend that made him famous.

In December of 1944, Speranza and the rest of the 101st Airborne Division were in the Belgian city of Bastogne when — on direct orders from Adolf Hitler — the German army turned and surrounded the city. Speranza was visiting with his wounded friend Joe Willis in the ruins of a church that was being used to house injured personnel, and Willis asked for a drink.

Speranza reminded Willis that they were surrounded, but went looking for a drink anyway — and as luck would have it, he found a tapped barrel of Belgian beer in a nearby tavern. There were no glasses, however, so Speranza resorted to delivering the beer in his helmet.

He went back to the tavern several times for more, but was met on his return from one such trip by the regimental surgeon — who scolded him, noting that drinking beer could be fatal for any soldier suffering from intestinal trauma.

Without a word, Speranza saluted and put on the helmet, which was still full of beer at the time, and made a quick exit — and thus the “Airborne Beer” was born.

“After being a machine gunner at the Battle of the Bulge, winning a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star and (spending) two decades as a public school (history) teacher, Airborne Beer is what I’m famous for,” he would joke in later years.

Speranza was one of the few American soldiers who saw the inside of Hitler’s famous “Eagle’s Nest” in Berchtesgaden, where he said he saw the German dictator’s plan to divide up the globe with the other Axis powers — Italy and Japan — when the war was over. “If anybody ever doubted why we had to fight that war, there it was on the wall,” he said.

Speranza was discharged from the Army in 1946, and became a history teacher. For decades, he returned to Bastogne for anniversaries and memorial events. He even continued to jump, celebrating his 98th birthday in March, 2023, with a tandem jump from the World War II-era “Tico Belle.”

When I met PFC Vincent Speranza, both of us had just stepped off a transatlantic flight. I was en route to Bastogne for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge — and it soon became clear that he was as well.

I was standing near the baggage claim at the airport in Brussels, Belgium — and amid a cacophony of other languages, I could hear two men arguing in plain English.

Speranza, who would have been 94-years-old at the time, was animated — punctuating his thick New York accent with his hands in a way that made his Italian-American heritage undeniable.

Seated on a motorized cart, he was talking to a younger man who I quickly recognized as Ken McAuliffe, great-nephew of General Anthony McAuliffe — the American general who refused to surrender and held Bastogne until General George S. Patton arrived.

As the story goes, on December 22, 1944, the German commander sent a letter to McAuliffe under a white flag, informing him that the city was entirely surrounded (it was) and the Americans were grossly outnumbered (they were) and demanding that McAuliffe — and most of the 101st Airborne Division — surrender.

McAuliffe, according to the history books — and a letter he sent his beleaguered troops on Christmas Eve — sent the German commander one word in response: “NUTS!”

But Speranza, who was in Bastogne at the time as a member of the 501st Parachute Infantry, told the younger McAuliffe he didn’t buy it.

“I know that’s what they had to say to print it in the papers,” he said with a wink. “But I always thought that maybe, in private, he said something with a little more teeth.”

McAuliffe said no, explaining that wasn’t the general’s style. “When my great-grandmother — the general’s mother — got word of what had happened and heard that ‘NUTS!’ hade been his reply, she just laughed and threw up her hands. ‘That’s our Tony,’ she said.”

And so I watched, in awe, as a veteran of one of the bloodiest campaigns of World War II argued — three-quarters of a century later — with the great-nephew of his own commanding general about what that general did or did not say while in the grips of one of the most desperate moments in history.

RIP Vincent Speranza, 1925-2023