Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley is a media darling.
She started her time in national politics as the governor of South Carolina, where she was touted as a free market-loving leader who stimulated the Palmetto State’s economy, making it a dynamo of innovation and economic prosperity.
But for Haley, who has never stopped reminding audiences that she is both a woman and a daughter of immigrants, she was never planning to simply be a background player in the hurly-burly of national GOP politics.
Haley had greater ambitions.
She was a modern day “boss girl” who was going to climb that slippery ladder of national politics and ascend to the highest level — the presidency itself.
No Low That Nikki Haley Won’t Go
A woman who, in 2015, came out early in opposition to Donald J. Trump’s unlikely 2016 presidential campaign, Haley found herself as one of the primary sycophants for President Donald Trump.
She was a tough-as-nails woman, who talked tough and whispered sweet-nothings into the Orange Man in the White House’s ear. There was no low that Haley wouldn’t go. She’d abase herself to Trump as well as to his children, notably Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump (a.k.a. “Jarvanka”). All to acquire power and ascend to that next rung on the ladder.
But what are Nikki Haley’s beliefs?
Well, there wasn’t a Third World country that she didn’t want to bomb the bejesus out of. In fact, rumors suggested that she was upset that Trump wasn’t more gung-ho about obliterating Middle East countries. She was sort of a female John Bolton.
Haley was also totally onboard with seeking another world war with countries like Russia and China, as well. What’s more, Nikki Haley loved posturing on faux moral grounds while at the UN.
It was all so 2002.
Nikki Haley was pro-Israel, which is great. As a national policy, supporting Israel is a no-brainer. They’re our closest ally in the Middle East, sharing values as well as interests with us, and we must preserve that relationship.
But according to multiple sources who were working contemporaneously with Haley at the UN, the Trump administration’s ambassador to the world body was quietly undermining her boss by making promises that the forty-fifth president had never consented to.
Haley was also known to have made repeated insinuations that she was the only U.S. government official that Israeli leaders could trust within the UN. It was all so unprofessional and, however supportive of Israel she may have been, her subversive actions actually risked undermining the U.S.-Israel relationship by committing the U.S. to things that the then-president may not have agreed to or wanted to do.
A Most Duplicitous Person
Nikki Haley was not a team player. She was never onboard with the Trump agenda, no matter what she told the former president. It wasn’t only on the issue of Israel that she undercut Trump. She did it all the time on issues that she believed she knew more about than did the president.
There’s no doubt that, as a long-time player in the government, Nikki Haley did probably know more about specific international issues than did Trump. Yet, that does not justify stepping outside your chain of command.
What’s more, it underscores the duplicity that Haley routinely engaged in.
Here was a woman who cynically deployed her feminine wiles to woo Trump (mostly via flattery) to get to the next stage in her otherwise ordinary career. Nikki Haley, once ensconced in the UN, began throwing her weight around, acting as though she, rather than Trump, was the president—operating under the idea that Nikki Haley knew more than the elected leaders of the country.
In fact, she flippantly explained to the press while serving as Trump’s UN ambassador that, “I don’t see [my role] as pushing an ‘America First’ policy, I see it as defending America.” Of course, unlike any other U.S. ambassador to the UN, when she said this, Haley received plaudits for her proud claims about undermining the former president while ostensibly working for him.
Haley alienated other Trump cabinet members, too.
And when those cabinet officials — who, at times, shared her secretly derisive views of Trump — tried calling her out for her repeated transgressions at the UN, Nikki Haley would run to Trump and Jarvanka to manipulate them into backing her up.
Haley’s tenure at the UN ended with a whimper. Haley stunned everyone when she suddenly announced her resignation from the UN ambassador role. Despite the fact that Trump announced that the move was long planned, most of the Trump Administration appeared genuinely caught unaware by the announcement.
Rumors have suggested that she was pushed out and may have issued her resignation announcement as a face-saving gesture. Alas, the pure chaos that defined the Trump administration will cloud this issue for many years to come.
My Sweet Neocon
Once out of the UN, Haley’s next career move was telling. She took a seat on the board of Boeing. The former UN ambassador remained ensconced there long enough to garner a nice paycheck.
Then, at the opportune moment, Haley resigned from that cushy board position “in protest” over a controversial taxpayer-funded bailout that the company received as part of the Trump Administration’s COVID relief economic program.
These bailouts were hugely unpopular, and she was attempting to insulate herself from the stench of those corporate welfare programs that her old boss, Trump, was enacting.
Haley left Boeing not out of any sense of moral outrage. Instead, she abandoned that post because she planned on running for the presidency in 2024. And, my word, has her rhetoric in the 2024 GOP Primary about the old boss that she used to lavishly praise changed.
Now, he’s “reckless” and “irresponsible.” (By the way, he’s proven that he is.) But these are whiplash-inducing reversals that likely reflect Haley’s true feelings about the forty-fifth president more accurately than anything she ever uttered while working for the man.
There’s a shocking degree of insincerity, duplicity, and cynicism with Haley that I hope every GOP voter will ultimately detect and vote against when the time comes. Speaking of cravenness, a new report about Haley’s time as South Carolina’s governor shows that she helped to build the Palmetto State’s economic miracle on the backs of Chinese firms.
You read that right.
During Haley’s time as governor of South Carolina, various Chinese firms invested nearly $600 million total into South Carolina.
This, from a woman running for the presidency in 2024 partly on the platform of, “The line between Chinese investors and the Chinese Communist Party is exceptionally thin. The national security risk is too great. We must prevent China from buying more land and force it to sell what it already owns.”
You might be reading this, thinking, “Well, these deals were part of a wider economic growth initiative that Haley initiated as governor. She likely didn’t understand the sordid details.” Sadly, that excuse doesn’t fly.
Because in 2015, the then-governor of South Carolina was photographed emceeing a groundbreaking ceremony in Camden, SC, in which the Qingdao-based appliance manufacturer, Haier, was expanding its presence in the Palmetto State under Haley’s leadership.
Further, that photograph was then posted to Haley’s official Facebook account where the caption reads, “We were excited to participate in the groundbreaking for Haier’s expansion in Camden!”
That deal with Haier represented a $72 million investment from China. And Haley was ecstatic over it. She even saw it as a plank for her future political career. Until Donald Trump came along and highlighted why doing business with China is a bad idea. Sure, you might be inclined to think that Haley was simply following the pack by supporting greater trade with China.
She was.
Bad for America
But the idea that she’d be somehow better for U.S. foreign policy is absurd. Nikki Haley has proven herself to be duplicitous. She is only in it for herself. Haley cares little for the American people.
From undermining the president because she wanted a more hawkish foreign policy to taking a sinecure at Boeing — to even accepting millions in “investments” from Chinese firms while South Carolina governor — Haley is not the one we need to lead us out of the toxic miasma that is the Biden presidency.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
From 19FortyFive
Donald Trump Just Proved How Stupid He Is
