Mike Pompeo Trashes Nikki Haley; Claims She Schemed With Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to Replace Pence as VP in New Book
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Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo opened fire on Nikki Haley in his upcoming memoir, insulting her multiple times and accusing his fellow Trump administration alum of plotting to replace Mike Pence as vice president.
The Guardian got an early look at Pompeo’s book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love. In a published excerpt, Pompeo vents about a time when Haley got a personal Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump back when she was serving as the former president’s ambassador to the United Nations.
Pompeo was angered by the meeting, claiming Haley duped Trump’s former chief of staff John Kelly at the time because she was flanked by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump instead of meeting with the former president alone.
“As best Kelly could tell, they were presenting a possible ‘Haley for vice-president’ option,” Pompeo writes. “I can’t confirm this, but [Kelly] was certain he had been played, and he was not happy about it. Clearly, this visit did not reflect a team effort but undermined our work for America.”
There was recurring intrigue for years about whether Trump considered replacing Pence with Haley as his running mate. Beyond plays for the vice presidency, though, Pompeo disparaged Haley’s role in the Trump administration while taking more shots at the broader course of her political career.
From The Guardian:
Regarding Haley, who has also published books as she considers a presidential run, Pompeo disparages both the role of UN ambassador – “a job that is far less important than people think” – and Haley’s performance in it.
“She has described her role as going toe-to-toe with tyrants,” Pompeo writes. “If so, then why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”
Haley resigned – or, in Pompeo’s words, “flat-out threw in the towel” – in October 2018. By quitting, Pompeo writes, Haley “abandoned” Trump as she had “the great people of South Carolina”, by resigning as governor.
