Nikki Haley resigned Wednesday from her post as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the Associated Press reports, announcing the decision in the Oval Office with President Donald Trump, who touted the “big announcement” and called Haley “my friend.”
Trump praised Haley in the Oval Office as they announced she will resign at the end of the year, saying she “has been very special to me.” Trump said Haley told him about six months ago that she wanted to “take a break.”
Haley, a former South Carolina governor who has served as U.N. ambassador since January 2017, was a sharp critic of Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. And she has publicly disagreed with Trump on some occasions during her tenure as U.N. Ambassador. In a column for The Washington Post last month, Haley responded to the anonymous Trump Administration “resistance” column in defense of the President.
“I, too, am a senior Trump administration official,” Haley said in the Post column. “I proudly serve in this administration, and I enthusiastically support most of its decisions and the direction it is taking the country. But I don’t agree with the President on everything. When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him in person.”
“He does not shut out his advisers, and he does not demand that everyone agree with him,” she wrote. “I can talk to him most any time, and I frequently do. If I disagree with something and believe it is important enough to raise with the president, I do it. And he listens. Sometimes he changes course, sometimes he doesn’t. That’s the way the system should work. And the American people should be comfortable knowing that’s the way the system does work in this administration.”
