Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley stuck to her guns during a heated interview on the “Today” show Tuesday in defending President Trump’s phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart.
Haley, 47, who has been defending Trump in a media tour to promote her new tome, “With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace,” joined Savannah Guthrie, who urged the former ambassador to “stick only to the undisputed facts.”
During the 10-minute grilling, Haley defended her former boss’s July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky that sparked an impeachment inquiry about whether Trump withheld almost $400 million in aid in exchange for a probe into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
Haley said she didn’t think it was an impeachable offense because the “aid flowed.”
“Here you’ve got a situation where there was no investigation, and the aid flowed as it was supposed to,” she said. “So, when you look at that situation, it’s hard to see where impeachment would qualify.”
“With all due respect,” Guthrie interjected, using the name of her guest’s book, which came out Tuesday. “To borrow a phrase.”
“That doesn’t seem like much of a defense of the president,” she said as she pushed Haley on whether Ukrainian aid was held up. “That he might have tried to do those things, but it didn’t work out, so it’s all OK.”
Haley repeatedly pointed out that “it was released.”
“You said, ‘Through it all, we were always placing America first,'” Guthrie said, reading a sentence from Haley’s resignation letter.
“How is asking a foreign country to investigate your political rival putting America first? Whose interest is that in? Is it in America’s interest or the president’s personal interest?” she said.
Haley replied: “Ukraine has always been an issue with corruption.”
Guthrie also asked about Trump’s “truthfulness.”
“Savannah, I talked to him multiple times, and when I had issues, he always heard me out. I never had any concern on whether he could handle the job, ever,” the former ambassador replied.