Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said President Trump is truthful and said she never doubted his fitness in office.
“I never did,” Haley told the host.
Haley was then questioned about the president’s truthfulness.
“Savannah, I talked to him multiple times, and when I had issues, he always heard me out. I never had any concern on whether he could handle the job, ever,” the former U.N. ambassador said.
When Guthrie asked her more questions, Haley said, “Yes, in every instance that I dealt with him, he was truthful, he listened, and he was great to work with.”
Haley was on the show to promote her memoir, “With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace,” published on Tuesday.
“It was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn’t know what he was doing.”
In one instance, she recalled a disagreement she had with Tillerson and Kelly during an Oval Office meeting over a suggestion that the United States shouldn’t fund a United Nations agency that supports the Palestinians. Haley said she had the support of the Trump administration’s Middle East envoys.
Kelly and Tillerson said that cutting aid could lead to threats to Israel, Haley said.
“I was so shocked I didn’t say anything going home because I just couldn’t get my arms around the fact that here you have two key people in an administration undermining the president,” Haley told The Washington Post.
Kelly, meanwhile, issued a statement to several news outlets that if giving Trump “the best and most open, legal, and ethical staffing advice from across the [government] so he could make an informed decision is ‘working against Trump,’ then guilty as charged.”
On Monday, Tillerson also responded, denying Haley’s claims that he tried to undermine Trump’s agenda.