South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had one condition when asked to deliver the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address: It’s my speech.
A Haley adviser involved with preparing the speech told CNN that when the governor accepted the high-profile role, she did so on the condition that the speech would be her own.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, who has given the GOP response in the past, told Haley that he completely understood because when he gave the speech, he had the same condition.
“Your words, your ideas,” is how the Haley adviser described what Ryan told her. A Ryan aide also told CNN the speech was “all her.”
And in the end, “there was nothing in the speech they put in, and nothing in the speech they tried to take out,” according to the adviser.
The adviser did say that people in leadership in Washington looked at the speech and made some minor grammatical suggestions, but that is about it.
Haley herself said in a news conference Wednesday that Ryan gave her tips like putting a cough drop in her mouth, but nothing more substantive than that.