Nikki Haley was under consideration to become Donald Trump’s secretary of state when she flew to New York to meet the President-elect for the first time since his election victory.
The South Carolina governor was torn. The baggage from the 2016 campaign – she supported Marco Rubio in her state’s all-important presidential primary and later backed Ted Cruz – didn’t suddenly evaporate for Trump, who never forgets a slight.
But there was something more fundamental that bothered her: Her resume. Yes, Haley traveled abroad as governor and she was successful in bringing business into the state. But none of that could prepare her to lead American diplomacy in a world where North Korea was becoming more aggressive, the crisis in Syria was deepening, Venezuela was succumbing to a dictator and the war in Afghanistan showed no sign of easing.
She told Trump no.
“I’m very aware of when things are right and when they are not,” she told me during an extensive interview recently. “I just thought he could find someone better.”
Haley flew back to South Carolina planning to finish the final two years of her term. Reince Priebus, Trump’s first – and short-lived – White House chief of staff, had other plans. He called Haley a few days after her meeting with Trump and asked her to consider being the US ambassador to the United Nations. She was intrigued, but had some conditions.
First, she told Trump she wanted to be a member of the Cabinet and the National Security Council, privileges enjoyed by her predecessors in the Obama administration. Perhaps most importantly, she wanted the latitude to be herself, to say what she wanted.
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In all honesty, I didn’t think they were going to take me up on everything I asked for. And they gave me that. So how do you turn that down?
“I said ‘I am a policy girl, I want to be part of the decision-making process,’” she told me in recalling the conversation with Trump. “He said, ‘done.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to be a wallflower or a talking head. I want to be able to speak my mind.’ He said, ‘That is why I asked you to do this.’ In all honesty, I didn’t think they were going to take me up on everything I asked for. And they gave me all that. So how do you turn that down?”
She said yes. And in her nearly eight months on the job, she has repeatedly spoken her mind, whether it’s going further on human rights than many of her administration colleagues or denouncing racism at home.
Haley told CNN’s “New Day” in August that she had a “personal conversation” with Trump about his widely criticized response to violence at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and would “leave it at that.”
She was more specific in an email to her staff that I obtained in which she said the “horrible acts” in Charlottesville “took me back to sad days dealing with the Charleston tragedy in 2015.” She was referring to the attack on Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a white supremacist who killed nine parishioners and hoped to start a race war.
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Those who march spewing hate are few, but loud. We must denounce them at every turn, and make them feel like they are on an island and isolate them the same way they wish to isolate others.
“Those who march spewing hate are few, but loud,” she wrote. “We must denounce them at every turn, and make them feel like they are on an island and isolate them the same way they wish to isolate others.”
This is the sentiment she communicated to the President, according to one of her aides.
Haley’s tough talk can occasionally go overboard, as when she recently said North Korea was “begging for war.” Her communications savvy can belie the fact that she has the thinnest foreign policy background of any recent UN ambassador and sometimes misses the nuances of a complicated world.
Even her admirers question how much weight her smooth rhetoric carries with a president who sometimes veers in the opposite direction.
“The international community has to understand at the end of the day, it’s not what she says, it’s what Trump does,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who occasionally spars with the President on foreign policy, told me. “I like what Nikki says, but sometimes I wonder if it’s going to get done.”
Still, she’s undeniably one of the most prominent members of Trump’s Cabinet. When Trump was in Virginia in August to deliver a speech on Afghanistan, soldiers were lining up for pictures with her – not the President. The next day, Haley made a blitz of television appearances praising the speech. More recently, it was Haley — not Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — making a case to step back from the Iran deal.
(For his part, Tillerson has kept an unusually low profile in favor of quiet diplomacy and hasn’t yet delivered a major speech.)
Haley will be front-and-center again this month when she hosts Trump for his first address to the United Nations General Assembly. The annual meetings will be a crucial moment for Trump, who has angered many world leaders by withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and pursuing a controversial “America First” agenda.
Prominence is risky in Trump’s world. He loathes sharing the spotlight and has no trouble showing aides the door when they get too comfortable in the public eye. But so far, Haley has smoothly navigated her celebrity status without crossing Trump.
She said Trump has “never once” called to say she went too far. She hasn’t suffered anything close to the embarrassment of Priebus, Attorney General Jeff Sessions or other officials Trump has deemed disloyal.
Haley casts herself as a “bull in a china shop.” But she and her aides stress she has a clear understanding of her role, and that the President encourages her to pursue his policies with her own style.
“I don’t go rogue on the President,” Haley said in our interview. “I’m a strong voice by nature. He’s very aware of what I’m doing and he’s very supportive.”
The question is whether the United Nations is enough for a political player such as Haley. Tillerson is said to be unhappy in his post. Could she succeed him now that she’s beefed up her foreign policy chops at the UN? While denying any knowledge of such a move, Rubio told me Haley enjoys the most bipartisan support of anyone in Trump’s Cabinet.
“If she were to be nominated for another position in the administration, her confirmation would be the easiest of anyone serving,” said Rubio, who has stayed close with Haley since she endorsed his presidential campaign.
Alternatively, is she laying the groundwork to be on a presidential ticket? As Politico first reported, the Democratic National Committee is already digging into the pasts of Haley, Vice President Mike Pence, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse – Republicans at the center of Washington speculation as presidential contenders if Trump isn’t on the ballot for some reason in 2020.
Haley told CNN’s Jamie Gangel in April she “can’t imagine running for the White House.” During our interview, she deflected questions about her future in or out of the Trump administration and said she’s concentrating on “making the American people proud” in her current job.
While her conventional Republican positions endear her to many in the party, Trump loyalists inside and outside the White House grumble Haley doesn’t really believe in Trumpism. They resent what they view as efforts to moderate the President to be more like the mainstream conservatives he beat in last year’s primaries.
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He supports her until he doesn’t. The danger will be when he doesn’t feel she endorses his beliefs.
“He supports her until he doesn’t,” a former Trump campaign official who still advises the White House from outside the administration told me. “The danger will be when he doesn’t feel she endorses his beliefs.”
