BY BBC NEWS,9TH OCT 2018-US President Donald Trump has accepted the resignation of UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
He told reporters in the Oval Office that she would be leaving the post at the end of the year after doing “an incredible job”.
Joined
by the former South Carolina governor in the Oval Office, he invited
her to come back in a different role. “You can have your pick,” he said.
Mrs Haley was confirmed as US envoy to the UN in January 2017.
The White House revolving door
Mr Trump said Mrs Haley had told him six months ago she wanted to take some time off.
She told reporters that despite speculation, she was not planning to
run for president in 2020 and would be campaigning for Mr Trump, who has
already announced his re-election bid.
“Thank you, Mr President. It has been an honour of a lifetime,” she said alongside Mr Trump.
The
president said Mrs Haley “has been very special to me, she has done an
incredible job, she is a fantastic person, very importantly, but she is
also somebody that gets it”.
“We’ve done a fantastic job together,” he continued. “We’ve solved a
lot of problems, and we’re in the process of solving a lot of problems.”
“Hopefully
you’ll be coming back at some point, right,” Mr Trump said. “Maybe a
different capacity, you can have your pick.” Mrs Haley laughed.
Mr Trump added that he would be naming her replacement in the next two to three weeks.
“She’s made it a very glamorous position, more importantly, a more important position. So we have many people that want to do it and they’re very good people,” he said.
Who is Nikki Haley?
- Nikki Haley, born Nimrata Randhawa to
Indian immigrant parents, was raised as a Sikh in Bamberg, South
Carolina, later converting to Christianity - Her first job as a 13-year-old was bookkeeping for her family’s clothing store
- In 2010, she became South Carolina’s
first female and first minority governor – and the youngest governor in
the country. She was re-elected to the post in 2014, serving until she
joined the Trump cabinet in 2016 - Mrs Haley gained national prominence
for her response to a mass shooting in June 2015 at a predominantly
African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina when she removed
the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds, receiving praise
from both sides of the aisle - Before becoming the US envoy, Mrs
Haley had little foreign policy experience, though she did travel abroad
as governor to broker economic deals for South Carolina - While she eventually did back Mr
Trump, she did not endorse him during the 2016 presidential campaign,
instead backing Florida Senator Marco Rubio - Mrs Haley is married to Army National Guard Captain Michael Haley, and the couple have two teenage children
Her exit comes after she served as the temporary president of the UN Security Council for one month.
Mrs Haley’s Twitter bio has already removed all references to her role as UN ambassador.
In
April, she clashed with the White House when a Trump aide suggested she
had prematurely announced a new round of sanctions against Russia.
White
House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters Mrs Haley had got
“ahead of the curve” by previewing the policy, putting her remarks down
to “momentary confusion”.
She fired back hours later telling Fox News: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”
The
daughter of immigrants from India, Mrs Haley was a frequent and early
critic of Mr Trump during his election campaign whilst she served as the
Republican governor of South Carolina.
