The New York Times laments the exit of Nikki Haley
By
Patrick Martin
11 October 2018
The sudden resignation of US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley may prove to be a signal of a deeper crisis within the Trump administration. Or it may be related solely to Haley’s plans for her future political career, or to concerns as crass as the desire to make a great deal of money while she can still cash in on her high political and diplomatic profile—and perhaps before any connection to the Trump administration comes to be regarded as politically and socially disqualifying.
Several such explanations were floated in the American media after Haley’s appearance at the White House Tuesday, where Trump announced her departure, while fawning over her performance at the United Nations, and received her equally gushing praise, as well as a pledge that she would support him for reelection in 2020. (Haley, then governor of South Carolina, described Trump in 2016 as “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president,” and backed Senator Marco Rubio’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.)
This was accompanied by her extraordinary flattery of Trump’s daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner. “Jared is such a hidden genius that no one understands,” Haley said as Trump looked on. “And Ivanka has been just a great friend, and they do a lot of things behind the scenes that I wish more people knew about, because we’re a better country because they’re in this administration.”
The timing of the announcement raised eyebrows in Washington circles, since it came a month before the US midterm election, the traditional time for administration shake-ups, while Haley said she would stay in office through the end of the year, leaving sometime in…