U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo clashed with CNN’s Jim Acosta on Monday during a U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York.
Both of the top-cabinet officials said that questions of invoking the 25th Amendment against President Donald Trump are “absurd” and “ludicrous” and chided Acosta for broaching the subject.
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“I said yesterday on the Sunday shows that, literally, I have never once been in the White House where that conversation has happened,” Haley said. “I’m not aware of any cabinet members that are even talking about that. It is completely and totally absurd. No one is questioning the president at all. If anything, we’re trying to keep up the pace with him.”
Pompeo also knocked Acosta for mistakenly asserting that Haley was the only official on the stage who had been in the Trump administration since its inception.
“Fact check: I’ve been with the administration since the beginning, too,” Pompeo said with a grin. “That’s relevant. But I’ll just add — no discussion with me about the 25th Amendment in any way, either — so you can now report that two senior leaders have said that your question was ludicrous.”
“I apologize for not remembering that you were the CIA director,” Acosta responded. “If it’s so ludicrous, why did the deputy attorney general [Rod Rosenstein] have conversations about it behind the scenes?”
“I find the question ludicrous,” Pompeo repeated, arguing that he has been in the top levels of the administration since the beginning and has never heard a conversation like the one Rosenstein was reportedly involved in. (RELATED: Report: Rosenstein Discussed Wearing A Wire In Meetings With Trump)