Contributors

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Nikki Haley Has More Balls than Donald Trump

Last Friday Donald Trump looked like he finally stopped knuckling under to Vladimir Putin when the US, UK and France hit Syrian chemical weapons depots with cruise missiles.

When Nikki Haley announced Sunday that the United States would slap additional sanctions on Russia for supporting Assad's brutal dictatorship, it looked like Donald Trump was finally done being Putin's bitch.

Apparently, it was all for show: it turns out that the attacks did essentially nothing. And on Monday the Trump administration had changed its mind, and additional sanctions on Russia were off the table.

The Trump administration tried to blame Haley:
[A] Trump official accused UN Ambassador Nikki Haley of “momentary confusion” for announcing sanctions against the Kremlin this weekend that the administration later walked back.

But Haley isn’t going to take the fall. “With all due respect, I don’t get confused,” she said in a statement, according to CNN.

Her firm response came after National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow blamed Haley for the snafu. Haley said Sunday the US would punish Russia with sanctions for its role in supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons program. But the White House reversed itself Monday, reportedly because Trump wasn’t okay with the sanctions.

“She got ahead of the curve. She’s done a great job, she’s a very effective ambassador,” Kudlow said of Haley. “There might have been some momentary confusion about that.” He added that additional sanctions were “under consideration” but not implemented.

Haley, however, made it clear it that she wasn’t about to scapegoated. Kudlow later said he apologized to Haley for the demeaning comments, telling the New York Times that he was “totally wrong” to call her confused. “As it turns out, she was basically following what she thought was policy,” Kudlow said. “The policy was changed, and she wasn’t told about it, so she was in a box.”
The source of the confusion was, as always, Donald Trump.

What changed between Sunday and Monday mornings that had Trump shaking in his boots at the thought of angering Putin?

The Comey interview, in which Trump was reminded that Putin still has the pee-pee tape.

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