Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accuses Nikki Haley of conspiring with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump to be named vice president even while she was Donald Trump’s ambassador to the UN, in a new memoir rife with of the jokes about potential rivals in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries.
Pompeo actually writes that Haley “played” Trump’s then-chief of staff, John Kelly. Instead of meeting the president alone, he was accompanied by Trump’s daughter and her husband, both senior advisers. Pompeo describes his anger at Haley for securing an in-person Oval Office meeting with Trump without consulting him.
“As far as Kelly could tell,” Pompeo writes: “they presented a possible “Haley for Vice President” option. I can’t confirm this, but [Kelly] was sure it had been played and was not happy about it. This visit did not reflect a team effort, but undermined our work for America.”
Pompeo’s new book, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, out next week, has a juicy tidbit. The Guardian got a copy. The book also claims that Trump is the “crazy idea” that Pompeo could be both secretary of state and secretary of defense at the same time, in addition to the Haley story being one of the most shocking passages.
However, the Haley article is very much in the tradition of Washington journalism, telling everything Pompeo claims to despise. In addition, it supports rumors that Trump considered firing Mike Pence in favor of Haley, which he had to refute in 2019.
It will add to the mystery surrounding rumors that Kushner’s family is raising money for Haley in preparation for her 2024 run. Trump is still the only declared candidate for the Republican nomination a year after the primary. But the battle for dominance is getting worse.
Pompeo joins Pence in publishing his campaign book, but he is published a month early Ron DeSantisthe governor of Florida who is the only real enemy of the polls.
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In his descriptions of Pence, a self-declared fellow sincere Christian, and most of Trump himself, Pompeo is studiedly polite. Unlike Pence, Pompeo refrains from openly criticizing his former boss in his memoir, So Help Me God. Moreover, Pompeo is more comfortable with the often foul language of the previous president.
That’s what Pompeo claims Trump was referring to John Boltonhis third national security adviser, as one “asshole loser.” After his discharge, Bolton wrote his book The Room Where It Happened. The book, which chronicled the president’s private discussions and what Pompeo considers compassionate data, was a blockbuster despite Trump’s attempts to avoid publication.
Bolton has now made a bid for the White House to stop Trump. Bolton receives salvos from Pompeo, who compares him to Edward Snowden, a National Security Agency contractor who revealed surveillance secrets to the public in 2013, but who “at least had the courtesy not to lie about his reason.”
Pompeo writes that Bolton “should be in jail for revealing classified material.” Pompeo also expresses his desire to testify in Bolton’s eventual criminal prosecution. Pompeo criticizes Haley’s performance in the UN ambassadorship, which he mentions “a function that is considerably less essential than people assume”, and her writings as she weighs in on a presidential run.
“She has described her role as confronting tyrants,” Pompeo writes. “If so, why would she quit such an important job at such an important time?”
In October 2018, Haley resigned, or as Pompeo put it: “Suddenly threw in the towel.” According to Pompeoby leaving South Carolina Governor Haley “leave” Trump the same way they do “the great people of South Carolina.”
True to its title, Pompeo doesn’t mince words when describing his achievements, first as director of the C.I.A and later as head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The former soldier and congressman did release information about a private conversation in which he said the president’s chief of staff stated that Trump wanted him to keep his position as secretary of state while adding defense secretary to his portfolio.
Pompeo claims Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, told him on July 19, 2020 that Mark Esper was “will not make it” a long time at the Pentagon. This was in the midst of the turbulent summer of the coronavirus outbreak and racial justice demonstrations.
Families can’t afford groceries, mothers can’t find baby food, crime is at an all-time high, and we’re still near record inflation.
Those are the problems. Nobody cares what a group of tone-deaf suits in Davos talk about. pic.twitter.com/a2MG3WVOwV
— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) January 20, 2023
Pompeo says Meadows told him Trump wanted his secretary of state to do that “double hat,” meaning to “take on running the Department of Defense as an additional duty.”
Pompeo says he told Meadows that “a crazy idea” like he had “a lot” to do with the state and “couldn’t possibly be on the defense at the same time.”
Pompeo claims Trump did not ask him to do two jobs at the time. The author adds that the president was recalled that Henry Kissinger had been both National Security Advisor and Secretary of Stateto Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford after Bolton stepped down. “President Trump pitched the idea to me,Pompeo writes. “I think he was joking.”
When Trump reads Pompeo’s descriptions of that “crazy thoughts”, he may not be in the mood to joke. Instead, the former secretary of state writes that she will immediately “faded, all forever.”
Final thoughts
Nikki Haley plotted with Ivanka and Jared to try and run for vice president instead of Pence, claims Mike Pompeo in the new book. Please tell us what you think in the section below. Just follow us Lee daily for more such news.
