U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN) Nikki Haley cited the foreign success of the Trump Administration during a send-off at the White House on Tuesday. President Donald Trump said the former governor of South Carolina discussed resigning at the end of the year month’s ago, and that she will stay on until the end of the year.
“Nikki Haley, the Ambassador to the United Nations, has been very special person to me. She’s not only fantastic at her job, but she’s someone who gets it,” the president said in the Oval Office, praising her for the job she has done in the administration. “She told me maybe 6 months ago at the end of the year, ‘I’d like to take a little time off. I’d like to take a break.”
“I can speak for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when I say, he thinks the world of you.”
Secretary of State Pompeo just completed an overseas trip to Asia, including Japan, North Korea, South Korea and China. He said the details of a second nuclear summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un are “getting very close” to being finalized.
“We’re all happy for you in one way, but we hate to see you go,” President Trump said to the ambassador. “That’s the thing she did best at the United Nations. She got to know the players. They like her, and I think more importantly, they respect her.”
“Nikki you’ve done a fantastic job and I want to thank you so much.”
Ambassador Haley has been a staunch supporter of President Trump’s America First Foreign Policy Doctrine, otherwise known as “principled realism.” While opposed to foreign intervention, it’s predicated on the principles of offensive realism and requires firm responses to regimes like Iran and North Korea to avoid conflict.
Ambassador Haley has a more hawkish view on foreign interventions, but has carried out the president’s agenda.
“I want to thank the president for allowing us to come out and talk to you in this way. It’s been the honor of a lifetime. Look at the two years. Look at what’s happened in foreign policy in two years. They may not like what we do all the time, but they respect us now. We’ve made it stronger,” she said defending the demand to reform the United Nations allied relationships. “We’ve made it more efficient.”
In June 2017, the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose the severe sanctions on North Korea ever over their intercontinental ballistic missile program. Resolution 2371 (2017) cost the North Korean regime roughly one-third of their exports, totaling more than $1 billion and forcing Chairman Kim to the first ever summit between President Trump and Chairman Kim in Singapore, where the two agreed to work toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
U.S. Ambassador Haley’s speech at U.N. Security Council Briefing on North Korea was widely praised, and she is considered key to the resolution’s passage.
“It was a blessing to go into the U.N. everyday with body armor and fight for America,” she said. “It was a blessing, and I will always do that.”
She also blasted the anti-Israel bias at the U.N., something the U.S. under the Trump Administration has not ignored. In October 2017, the Trump Administration withdrew the U.S. from UNESCO, citing badly-needed reforms and a continued anti-Israel bias. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has long been under fire for exposed corruption and bias that continues to go unaddressed.
In 2015, the then-Republican South Carolina governor supported Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., over the president. In 2016, during the president campaign, she often had a contentious and soft relationship. But the two have fostered a closer relationship and friendship during the two years of the administration, a result of the president reaching out to the establishment wing of the Republican Party.
“No I’m not running for 2020. I can tell you what I’ll be doing is campaigning for this one,” she said turning to the president.
“I think it’s time for government officials to understand it’s time to step aside,” she said, adding the fresh people are needed from time-to-time to ensure energy is getting the job done. “The truth is I want to make sure this administration, this president, has the strongest person to fight.”
President Trump said he will name a successor within the “next two or three weeks, maybe sooner.”
