Today, Explained - Nikki out

Episode Date: October 9, 2018

Surprise! Nikki Haley, President Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, has resigned. Vox’s Alex Ward explains why one of the most popular members of the Trump cabinet would want to leave. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex Ward, you're one of the hosts of the Worldly podcast here at Vox. Nikki Haley, President Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, resigned today. This one felt a little different than a lot of the other resignations firings, right? A little odd, yeah. It was somewhat amicable. Yeah, people were smiling. There was like a whole press conference. Yeah, in the White House.

They seemed to be cordial. They said nice things to each other. She's done an incredible job. It has been an honor of a lifetime. We will miss you. We'll be speaking all the time, but we will miss you nevertheless. I said I am such a lucky girl. You have done a fantastic job and I want to thank you very much. That's weird in the age of Trump where the firings tend to be pretty vitriolic. And sometimes happen on Twitter even.

Right. What did she say in her resignation letter? She basically said that the reason she wanted to leave was she was a strong believer in term limits. So effectively two years being in the position that that's coming up. And so it was time for someone else to take the role and that she wanted to perhaps go into the private sector, but would still be a Trump supporter from the outside and still comment on foreign policy issues. Nikki Haley and Donald Trump have an interesting history, right? I mean, she started out as a never Trump politician.

Yeah, she was never really a Trump fan. Yes, Mr. Trump has definitely contributed to what I think is just irresponsible talk. But then it turned out after Trump won that he was trying to extend an olive branch to the traditional Republican establishment of which Haley belongs. And sure enough, and names her to be U.N. ambassador and widely praised. So the South Carolina governor, a regional success, heads the United Nations. How did she do? By all accounts, she was quite successful, actually.

Huh. Really? Yeah. But you can think of her successes in like two buckets. OK. Bucket one is her Trumpian accomplishments. OK. And bucket two is her traditional Republican foreign policy accomplishments.

All right. What are the Trumpian ones like Middle East? Trumpian ones are definitely the Middle East, right? So the way she pushed back against Iran, for example, called out Iran for its aggressive behavior in the region, even did this presentation in front of a missile saying, look at what they are giving to rebels in Yemen. They're the ones fueling the war. Aid from Iran's Revolutionary Guard to dangerous militias and terror groups is increasing. She did the presentation in front of an actual missile? Yeah, it was like a pretty dramatic backdrop.

Wow. Yeah. Just imagine if this missile had been launched at Dulles Airport or JFK or the airports in Paris, London or Berlin. That's what we're talking about here. That's what Iran is actively supporting. And then also her defense of the administration's decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem in Israel. For those that don't have our back, we're taking names.

We will make points to respond to that accordingly. And the overlap here, by the way, between the Trumpian and the Republican stuff is the administration's desire to pull out of what they deem to be ineffective UN organizations like UNRWA, which is really a Palestinian aid organization, the Human Rights Council, which it seems to be anti-Israel. Past Republican administrations have criticized those institutions as well. Sure. Both Trump wanted that and traditional Republican foreign policy kind of dictated that. Where does she sort of break off? Is it Russia?

So Russia, especially, right? Russia's support of the Syrian civil war. How many more children have to die before Russia cares? When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action. And of course, Trump famously won't push back on Russia really for anything. So her constant lambasting of Russia was one thing. Talking about human rights and America's defense of human rights around the world, that was a big thing, something that Trump doesn't really talk about. And then although it was also a Trump push,

the fact that she was able to not make it just unilateral sanctions against North Korea and unilateral punishments against that country, which frankly past administrations have tried to do, but to make it a global effort and to get that through the UN Security Council, to get China and Russia on board, that is an insane accomplishment that requires a lot of backroom negotiation. So the Trumpian stuff sticks out, but it ignores a lot of the more traditional Republican foreign policy moves that she was able to make while in New York. A Quinnipiac poll from April found that Nikki Haley was the only Trump cabinet member to hold majority approval ratings among Democrats,

Republicans, and independents, I read. Overall, 63% approved and 17% disapproved of her performance as UN ambassador. So I don't know. She's doing a good job, according to popular opinion. The president seems happy with her work. Why resign? No one really knows. But my theory is she lost a bit of power since Mike Pompeo has become secretary of state. So let's rewind back to when Rex Tillerson was the secretary. Trump and Tillerson famously had a troubled relationship. Right.

At that time, Haley was almost viewed, and this is like late 2017, Haley was almost viewed as a shadow secretary of state leading America's foreign policy. When the administration tried to get some of this foreign policy message out, they asked Haley to go on the Sunday shows, which she was always willing to do. The Americans just said, we want our embassy in the capital, and that capital is Jerusalem. I still don't see how it moves the peace process forward, but I do want to get to know— It's okay. It will move the peace process forward, and I'll come back and tell you I told you so. Okay, well, I await that booking. Let's turn to North Korea, though.

Enter Mike Pompeo and also John Bolton to the White House. You start to see that she's not out as much in public. You start to see that Trump has trust in Bolton and in Pompeo, and so they are the voices of American foreign policy, which, by the way, makes sense. The Secretary of State should be the voice of American foreign policy and the national security advisor to a certain extent. And so Haley's star starts to diminish.

That's not to say that her work wasn't going well. She was still pursuing a lot of interesting things at the UN, but the star was fading. And I think for someone who very clearly has future political ambitions, you want your star to be high. You want your stock rising. Yeah. And so I think she saw that there was really nowhere else to go, especially Pompeo's named as Secretary of State. She's not going to wait out Pompeo to go. So she's out. Let's talk about those aspirations for a second. I mean, this is someone who not a lot of people had faith in to do a good job at the UN, but she was successful.

What's in store for her next? Is she going to try and run in 2020 or something or what? So that's the theory. The theory is that she's going to run for president, that it was a bad kept secret that she wants to be president. 2020 seems wrong, the wrong time. One, her former boss, her future former boss, Trump, will be running for sure. It's unclear that she could primary him. And frankly, she has said that she would support Trump from the outside.

And so it seems like going back on that is probably not in the cards. You could think maybe 2024. I think she's going to spend six years maybe on the outside, gain some private sector experience, still be a voice of foreign policy, maybe get a cable deal or a cable news deal so she's out in public and then maybe go back into politics. Or if my math is right, I think Lindsey Graham's seat is up in 2020 in South Carolina. That would be tough to dislodge Graham. But I would be shocked if she didn't try to do something political between now and 2024. But as far as we know, she's thinking of a private sector career. There was this report that came out yesterday from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that questioned some of the private flights that she and her husband used to fly to South Carolina and D.C. from New York. As far as we know, this had nothing to do with the resignation

because the resignation letter is dated from a couple of days before this report came out. But I wonder if she were contacted by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, is there a chance that this resignation could just be like getting out while the getting's good? It's a possibility. I mean, you also have to think of the timing here. I mean, it's before the midterms where there's a chance that Democrats take over, you know, start harming a little bit of Trump's foreign policy agenda or at least blockading them. If the quote unquote blue wave is true, you could also think that after the elections, Robert Mueller may come back into the fray.

If you're Haley, you're thinking, well, it could get bad for me, right? The foreign policy agenda that I've helped pursue will slow roll. Mueller could come back into the news and cause problems with the administration. Maybe I should get out before it possibly gets worse. And that would be now. And that would be now. Today. Literally today.

Thanks, Alex Ward. You're welcome, Sean. Alex Ward reports on defense and international security for Vox. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. This is Natasha. Hi, Natasha. This is Sean. How's it going? Good. How are you? Great. So I told people on the podcast yesterday that there's like a bread half and an ice cream half of the hosts of this show from start to sale. And you're the ice cream half, right?

I am indeed. That's me. Tell people about your ice cream enterprise. We're known for ice cream sandwiches, but we have delicious pints as well. And we're coming out with a whole vegan line in 2019 too. We started from trucks and now we're all around the country at grocery stores. And it's called Cool House. It's called Cool House. Cool House Awesome Ice Cream. So then what made you want to make a podcast? You know, my friend, the bread half, which is Aaron Patinkin of Ovenly, and I used to, when we'd get together, obviously a lot of it's, you know, just us hanging out and having fun. But inevitably, we start talking about business and lessons learned and stories. And it's just such a special thing to share those stories from the trenches, both great and some, you know, more of a struggle with those who can really relate and have experienced them as well. And we just started

to realize, wouldn't it be amazing to kind of be able to open up this dialogue and let anyone who wanted to listen on the inside and to really hear just a whole kind of different perspective on what's behind the curtain of how business works and what it takes to make it succeed. And people can now listen to this perspective and these conversations wherever they get their podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, whatever. Exactly. And we have amazing, amazing guests for season one who will also shed a lot of light on the business experience. Start to sale wherever you find your podcasts. And maybe I'll try and get bread on the phone tomorrow.