Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley claimed she stood up against Rex Tillerson and John Kelly as they fought against her and President Donald Trump on withdrawing Palestinian aid and pulling out of the Iran deal.
Haley, talking with Fox & Friends Tuesday morning, continued speaking out against former Secretary of State Tillerson and former chief of staff Kelly after the two denied claims she made in a book released last week. Haley called both Kelly and Tillerson "two unelected people who thought they knew more than the president" and said they teamed up to fight her and Trump on several definitive actions taken during his presidency. Haley said she fought to defend Trump's decision to move the Israeli embassy, to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and to revoke Palestinian aid.
Haley reiterated that she "got along very well with Trump" and rejected Tillerson and Kelly's claims that she was rarely, if ever, present during meetings with the president.
"I mean, that's so Rex," Haley told Fox News Tuesday. "It's so typical and I'm not going to fight over anything, and if you notice both he and Kelly, neither one of them denied sitting me down and saying that. [As ambassador,] I attended cabinet meetings, national security council meetings, Oval Office meetings, I mean it was constant."
Haley relayed an anecdote about a disagreement between Tillerson, herself, Kelly and Trump over giving Palestinians aid, saying the Palestinian leaders "wouldn't reform, they continued to bash us and I said, 'you've got to pull the aid, there's no reason for us to be doing this,'" Haley recalled of the interaction.
"You guys go figure this out," Trump told the three of them.
"Finally, I think they were exasperated, not just by this, but also my defense of the president getting out of the Iran deal, my defense of the president getting out of the Paris Climate Agreement, my defense of the president moving the [Israeli] embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. And that's when they said, 'you don't understand, we're not trying to undermine the president, we're trying to save the country,'" Haley said.
Haley claimed that Kelly and Tillerson consistently had each other's back against her as they tried to "save lives" by rejecting several of Trump's foreign policies, including the controversial move of the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
"If I don't do the things I do, people will die," Tillerson told her, according to Haley's recounting of the exchange.
"Did people die?" Haley asked the Fox & Friends co-hosts, mocking Tillerson's apparent claim. "When we moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, did people die? And when we got out of the Iran deal, did people die?"
Dozens of Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces as they protested the opening of the Jerusalem embassy in May 2018. Haley, who resigned as ambassador in October 2018, did not mention the recent controversial move by the Trump administration to pull troops from northern Syria which many critics on both sides of the aisle described as an "abandonment" of the allied Kurdish fighters. In a separate interview with CBS News over the weekend, Haley said the U.S. should have had the backs of the Kurds.
Speaking with The Washington Post Monday, Tillerson denied trying to "undermine" the president and rebuked Haley's claims in her book that she was in attendance at several key meetings with Trump.
Haley acknowledged that she believes Tillerson and Kelly "were both patriots, and I will say they both love America," but she doubled down on her claim they sought to undermine Trump's leadership.
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Benjamin Fearnow is a reporter based out of Newsweek's New York City offices. He was previously at CBS and Mediaite ... Read more
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