Trump Won’t Confirm or Deny Nikki Haley Asked for 2020 VP Slot – ‘I’m Not Going to Embarrass Her’

Thursday on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio show, former President Donald Trump addressed reports his former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley sought the 2020 vice presidential nomination.

Trump would not address the question specifically but said he did not want to embarrass Haley, who he called “overly ambitious.”

Partial transcript as follows:

TRUMP: Now in the case of Nikki Haley, she’s gone around publicly. You saw this all over the place.

HEWITT: Correct.

TRUMP: And she said I’ll never run against my president. He’s a great president. He’s been our greatest president. I’ll never run. I’ll never run. But Nikki suffers from something that’s a very tough thing to suffer from. She’s overly ambitious.

HEWITT: You know, Mike Pompeo says in his book that she asked you to become the Vice President in place of Mike Pence in the 2020 election. Is that true?

TRUMP: It’s absolutely false. That who asked me? Nikki Haley asked me to be Vice President?

HEWITT: Yeah, that’s in, according to John Kelly. That didn’t happen?

TRUMP: Can you imagine? That I would run as Vice President to Nikki Haley?

HEWITT: No, no, Nikki Haley asked you if she could be your vice presidential nominee in 2020.

TRUMP: Oh, I thought you said that she asked me if I’d be her vice president. That would be, that would be a big story.

HEWITT: No, no. Did she…

TRUMP: If anybody would say yes, I did, you should immediately take that person off your list as ridiculous. Okay, no, I did not ask her at all to be vice president. Nope, never mentioned it to her.

HEWITT: And she didn’t bring it up to you?

TRUMP: I don’t want to say that. I’m not going to embarrass her, but I have never asked her to be vice president.

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor

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