U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley dismissed insinuations from author Michael Wolff Thursday that she was having an affair with President Donald Trump.
Wolff told Bill Maher that he believed Trump was having an affair but that he couldn’t find enough evidence to print that allegation in his book “Fire and Fury.” People on the internet have suggested that this paragraph is Wolff’s backhand way of implicating Haley.
“The president had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future,” he wrote.
That insinuation “is absolutely not true,” Haley told Politico.
“I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there,” she told Politico, referring to a flight that took her and president from Washington to Long Island last July.
“He says that I’ve been talking a lot with the president in the Oval about my political future. I’ve never talked once to the president about my future, and I am never alone with him.”
Haley says she is just being treated like a lot of women who enjoy professional success that some people can’t explain except through insinuations of sexual pay for play.
“At every point in my life, I’ve noticed that if you speak your mind and you’re strong about it and you say what you believe, there is a small percentage of people that resent that and the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows, lies or not.”
In the interview, Haley admitted that she was initially “not a fan” of Trump and when she delivered the Republican response to President Barack Obama’s final State of the Union message, she suggested it would be a mistake to respond to “the siren call of the angriest voices.”
But time, the failure of her preferred presidential candidate — Marco Rubio — and an offer to represent the U.S. at the U.N. changed her tune.