Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and author of “With All Due Respect: Defending America With Grit And Grace“, joined Brian Kilmeade to discuss the first public impeachment hearing, why President Trump needs to press Turkey President Erdogan over his relationship with Russia when they meet, if her political future includes running for President and if she would be willing to replace Secretary of State Mike Pompeo if he decides to run for the Senate in Kansas.
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Full transcript:
Brian Kilmeade:
With me right now is Nikki Haley, if you’re watching on the Fox Nation app, and there’s few better times to be having in studio. I know you’re here because it’s been a while. And we also have a book out called With All Due Respect Defending America with Grit and Grace — might be number one in the country right now. Ambassador, from what you saw, you said a little bit of frustration you were telling me in the break.
Nikki Haley:
Well, the frustration is, look, and we know many foreign service officers. I dealt with them at the United Nations. I dealt with them at State Department. And they’re good people and they’re good patriots. And they always try and do the right thing, regardless of which president is in office. But we also, as U.N. ambassador, encountered some foreign service officers who used their political bias to try and move policy. And that does happen. These hearings, it’s really hard because you could have very good patriots up there. But the problem is they’re talking about their perception of what they thought the president wanted. It’s not the reality of what the president was actually doing. And that’s the part that’s dangerous because it makes a really gray line there.
Brian Kilmeade:
I found frustrating during a show on Fox and Friends. Wait a second — the Russians took Crimea. Then they go in and take two provinces of Ukraine with these separatists back them thoroughly. And I understand the number is 13,000 dead Ukrainians. And we didn’t provide any aid. In fact, the aid provided — President Obama went out his way not to deliver directly to the Ukraine, went to a third country and let somebody else deliver them to not provoke Vladimir Putin. And we’ll go to page 101 in your book, because you talk about Ukraine policy. These are quotes. Said “The United States stands with the people of Ukraine who have suffered for nearly three years under Russian occupation and military intervention. The United States continues to condemn all for immediate and call for immediate into the Russian occupation of Crimea. Crimea is a part of Ukraine and with Crimea — sanctions remain in place until Russia returns control of the peninsula to Ukraine. You do talk about, in your view, the president’s words had to be tougher. His actions were tough. But you want him to be tougher with his words on Russia?
Nikki Haley:
Well, you know, I talk in the book about the fact that sometimes, you know, the president got criticized for soft words and sometimes they were softer, but his actions were always very tough. And when I got to the United Nations on the Security Council, there was no better friend that I had on the council than the Ukrainian ambassador. And the president hit hard. I mean, he put sanctions on Russia. He expelled diplomats. He gave military training to Ukraine. They gave anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. I mean, so many things that we did to have the backs of Russia that went against Russia. We we’re building our military and building our energy sectors, which Russia didn’t like. The president was actually really hard on Russia. And Ukraine actually was a great friend to us. And we have worked very closely with Ukraine —
Brian Kilmeade:
With the previous leader. This new guy gets in and evidently people are pretty pumped even though he’s from the entertainment world; a comedian. They think that he sincerely is going about things the right way. Is that what you’re hearing?
Nikki Haley:
While he ran on corruption, wanting to clear up corruption in Ukraine. And so this is an issue that would have been relevant within the president’s conversation with him because that’s his big focus is on corruption.
Brian Kilmeade:
Now Adam Schiff is actually speaking — we’re bringing you Governor Nikki Haley, Ambassador Haley. She has her new book out. But also, she’s here at a fortuitous time because the day one of the impeachment hearings are taking place. Ambassador Taylor is expanding his opening remarks. And must have lasted in 25 minutes after George Kent spoke on his. Now when you lead with these two witnesses, you feel like they’re probably your best witnesses and people will be tuning in. And you mentioned when you first got in, nothing else was getting done. They’re not even funding the government. They’ve only funded for two or three bills and there’s no plan to meet. So, we’re just going to go into a ditch again. I’m not sure, but that’s not good for our credit. So, here is Governor, if you listen with me, here is what Adam Schiff just asked Ambassador Bill Taylor.
Adam Schiff:
Mr. Taylor, I’d like to begin by following up on something that you have disclosed today. And it just goes earlier to a majority minority, but it has some new information for the committee. You said in your testimony that one of your staff was present with Ambassador Sondland on the day after the July 25 phone call. Is that right?
Ambassador Taylor:
That’s right, Mr. Chairman.
Adam Schiff:
And as your staff related the event to you, your staff member could overhear Mr. Sondland, on the phone — overhear the president on the phone with Mr. Sondland, is that right?
Ambassador Taylor:
That’s correct.
Adam Schiff:
So the president must have been speaking loud enough on the phone — this was a cell phone, I take it?
Ambassador Taylor:
It was a cell phone.
Adam Schiff:
The president must have been speaking loud enough for your staff member to be able to overhear this. I.
Ambassador Taylor:
It was.
Adam Schiff:
What your staff member could overhear was President Trump asking Ambassador Sondland about “the investigations” is that right?
Ambassador Taylor:
That’s correct.
Adam Schiff:
I think you testified also that you had come to understand that the term investigations was a term that Ambassador Sondland as well as Volker used to mean matters related to the 2016 elections and the investigations of Burisma and Bidens. Is that correct?
Brian Kilmeade:
And — we know roughly where it’s going. My sense is — are you an attorney?
Nikki Haley: No, I’m an accountant.
Brian Kilmeade: But my sense is this — I know the president is obsessed with the fact that for three years he’s been hampered by the Mueller investigation of him focusing on Russia. Well, as you look at what Senator Menendez, Senator Leahy, were doing in Ukraine, when they were urging 2018 Ukraine to cooperate with the Mueller investigation. When you see the Fusion G.P.S. used as sources, people in the Ukraine, it doesn’t take a leap or a Russian conspiracy to see Ukraine had a role in the 2016 election. You know the president. He’s like what did Ukraine do to me?
Nikki Haley:
Well, and also, Brian, to know how frustrated the president is that he’s been under investigation after investigation over and over and no one is looking at where the real issues were. So he wants to see this get more balanced. He wants to go and see, you know, why isn’t anyone asking those questions? Why aren’t they asking them that? Why are they accusing me of things I didn’t do? I mean, you listen to what Adam Schiff just said. He said he’s got this breaking news and you have basically the person saying that the staffer heard a phone conversation that the staffer wasn’t on but thinks they heard this. This is getting so far out from the fact that you have to look at the facts and reality. We know we have a transcript. We’ve read the transcript to go and now say what a staffer thought they heard of a conversation that they weren’t a part of is getting ridiculous.
Brian Kilmeade:
I think it is. And this is something you’re — you had a cabinet position. You said I’ll take this job for two reasons. One, I’ve got to report to you, Mr. President. You did. Number two is it’s got to be a cabinet position, I need to be at the table with all these policies. And immediately, by the way, the new U.N. ambassador is not in the cabinet position.
Nikki Haley:
Right.
Brian Kilmeade:
And that was something that General Kelly made sure. He said as soon as you’re done, we’re not going to do this anymore. It’s a bad idea.
Nikki Haley:
That’s exactly right. No, he very much —
Brian Kilmeade:
How did you go to ask for that, by the way?
Nikki Haley:
You know, I knew that being governor, I wanted to make sure that I set myself up for success for the president and to do my job. And so I knew I didn’t want to work for anyone else. I would want to work directly with the president. That’s why I asked for the cabinet position. I am a policy person, so I wanted to be in the room when decisions were made. That’s why I asked to be on the National Security Council. And then the last thing I asked the president, I said, look, I’m not going to be a wallflower or talking head. I need to be able to say what I think. And he said Nikki that’s exactly why I want you to do this. And he was true from the first day to the last day. But what Kelly saw was he didn’t like how much influence or conversations I had with the president. He didn’t like how I bumped up against some of the things that they were trying to do. And so he made the comment to me that I promise you that the next — when you’re gone, I will make sure that this position is never a cabinet again.
Brian Kilmeade:
Do you believe that Chief of Staff Kelly was an anti-Trumper, or do you believe that he just wanted to provide discipline to a staff that he thinks needed discipline — Reince Priebus — nice guy he is — the president seemed to not have his respect and he seemed to run over him.
Nikki Haley:
And I think that’s the part that needs real clarification. First of all, I don’t think he was an anti-Trumper. I do think he’s a patriot. I think he served his country. His son — they obviously have sacrificed. The issue with Kelly and with Rex was the fact that it wasn’t that they were against the president and it wasn’t even that they thought this was a rogue president, the issue was this was they disagreed with him on policy. They didn’t think he should get out the Iran deal. They didn’t think they should move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They didn’t think we should get out of the Paris Climate Agreement. And there were multiple other issues that they disagreed. And that’s when you get into going against the Constitution, going against the American people. The reason this touched a nerve with me is because I was a governor. I was elected. I know how hard that is. And if I would have had a cabinet member that undermined me, that’s incredibly dangerous to do something like that. So literally, they disagreed on policy and thought that if they could get me on their side, I wouldn’t be challenging them as much.
Brian Kilmeade:
What’s interesting is because they might be your peers. Technically, you might see the Chief of Staff has more power than the U.N. Ambassador. I don’t know. You know, the secretary of state run the State Department. Okay. Technically, even though we tried to steal your staffer — you had to fight for your own staffer, which is insane. He should’ve just staffed on his own. Evidently, he was just lazy and didn’t want to fully gut the State Department on the budgeting, he just wasn’t doing the job. So it must have been hard looking at Kelly, six foot three inches, a general built like a brick wall. Him saying do this, do that — take a backward step. Rex Tillerson with a voice that should be in the Oakridge Boys coming out as an old Texan and telling me what to do. Looking at you maybe like you don’t know what you’re talking about and you just don’t feel as though you need to take a backward step. I watched you at the times in which the shooting of the church, I’ve seen your effort to take the flag Confederate flag down in South Carolina and just don’t change. Where that going to come from to stare down opposition?
Nikki Haley:
Yeah, I think it came from. From growing up, we were the only Indian family in a small southern town. I often say we weren’t white enough to be white, we weren’t black enough to be black. We were different. And we would get teased and bullied when we were younger. And my mom would always say, your job is not to show people how you’re different. Your job is to show them how you’re similar. And I carried that through my life. But I also carried through another lesson my mom said, which is whatever you do, be great at it and make sure people remember you for it. And so I’ve always believed that when you put yourself in a job, you’ve got to give it everything you have. This isn’t about having everybody like you. This is about people being better for it because you were there.
Brian Kilmeade:
You have to have the confidence. You have the confidence of yeah, right. You know, these three men are mad at me. They’re telling me to try and do this , but you just kind of stand your ground — are we done.
Nikki Haley:
I didn’t care if they were mad at me. I cared that we were following the rules of the president. The president had to make a decision. And I was determined to support him in doing that.
Brian Kilmeade:
Absolutely. And you also endorsed Marco Rubio even though your mom told you not to. And then the president went after you and you said, bless your heart in response to an aggressive tweet and I’m sure he liked and respect that. And I’m sure he brings it up all the time. If the president acts with you like he does with everybody else, he doesn’t forget that. Governor Nikki Haley here, we’re going to sum up what’s going on at the hearings, we’re still in the 45 minutes in which Democrats are talking right now. George Kent is responding to a question from the counsel on the Democratic side. And Adam Schiff has made some points. And clearly, Taylor and Kent had a huge problem with the summer foreign policy as relates to the Ukraine. I’ll talk to the governor about that and more about her book in just a moment. You’re listening to the Brian Kilmeade Show.
Brian Kilmeade:
So that’s exactly what Democrats want him to say and just be honest, George Kent moments ago, say a half hour ago, now we’re at the point where we have the Democratic counsel speaking with Ambassador Taylor. Few more minutes with Gov. Nikki Haley who wrote With All Due Respect, Defending America with Grit and Grace. Have you had interaction with Mayor Giuliani? Did you see the relationship between him and the president?
Nikki Haley:
I met with him once right when I got to the U.N. and we sat down and talked all about cybersecurity and what we needed to be doing in America, what we seeing, you know, what other countries were doing. But I never had any other dealings with him. And I dealt a lot with Ukraine and I never encountered him at all. And I never saw him at the White House with the president —
Brian Kilmeade:
For the first eight months, he disappeared — the job as secretary of state — everyone thought he was angry. I still don’t know where he was. When he came back, he has so much pull with the president, that would be something to take stock of if you were in the Oval Office?
Nikki Haley:
Right, exactly.
Brian Kilmeade:
Governor, today at 5:00, the president’s going to hold a joint press conference with President Erdogan of Turkey. Do you think the president should be meeting with him?
Nikki Haley:
Well, this is a thing — I mean, especially with everything that’s happened in Syria recently. And he needs to stay in contact with Erdogan. He needs to stay in contact with Turkey, if for no other reason, this is the troubled member of NATO that everybody is worried about. And so we’ve got to figure out, are they going to stay in line with the allies or are they going to continue to side with Russia? And the president’s got to figure that out. I mean, here they’ve gone and they’ve taken, you know, about all these missiles from Russia. And they’re starting to have this love fest with Russia. We’ve got to find out where Turkey is. And I hope that’s what the president does, is say, look, you’ve got to pick a side and which side are you on? And how are we going to go to work together going forward?
Brian Kilmeade: Do we need them in NATO more than they need to be NATO.
Nikki Haley: No, they need us more than they need them ,right? Right now, I think they’re trying to walk a line. I think they’re trying to play with Russia and trying to keep us in there. And that’s why we need to be strong with them and hold them to account.
Brian Kilmeade:
F-35’s — Russian missile defense system, they said we were too slow. From what you knew, were we too slow? Y.
Nikki Haley:
You know, I actually had the conversation with the Turks about it when we were trying to get them to get missiles from us as opposed to Russia. They had made the comment about us being too slow. And I went to the White House and said, look, what are we doing? What’s the holdup? There is a situation in the federal government where it takes so many bureaucrats to approve us giving a country arms that there is a serious problem.
Brian Kilmeade:
When you look at your next step — you’re in the private sector, you’re going to make some money. I imagine your speeches and this book is doing incredibly well. When you think about running for president? When would you think it becomes realistic? You know, what it takes to put a campaign together.
Nikki Haley:
A year is a long time in politics, and five years from now is really — seems like forever. So right now, I’m just focusing on this next election. Getting the president re-elected –
Brian Kilmeade:
You’re going to help him?
Nikki Haley:
Absolutely. I’ve already — I did an event for him a couple weeks ago. I’ll be out there campaigning for him. I’m campaigning for others that are that are running and just trying to get good people in there.
Brian Kilmeade:
And Ambassador, if Mike Pompeo’s going to run for Senate, we need somebody that knows the job with no ramp up time, would you take it for the next year?
Nikki Haley:
I don’t think about it, because I don’t think Mike’s going anywhere. I think he very much has said that he’s in the position of secretary of state. I know there’s a lot going on in the world and the president needs him. And so, I’m going to assume that’s where he’s going to stay.
Brian Kilmeade:
But if he loses the Senate, it’s going to be an ugly next four years if he keeps the White House. So, that seat is up.
Nikki Haley:
No, we have to keep the Senate. Look, if Mike goes and runs for that, he will win. I strongly believe that.
Brian Kilmeade:
Would you replace him?
Nikki Haley:
I haven’t even thought about that. I can’t even imagine that.
Brian Kilmeade:
You want me to broker something —
Nikki Haley:
No. I don’t want you to broker anything.
Brian Kilmeade:
Listen, the book is great. I loved it. I learned so much about it. Your depth of decisions. Also took on Larry Kudlow. You took on Mitt Romney and you came up better for it. Thanks, Ambassador.
Nikki Haley:
Thank you and congratulations on your book.
