On this week’s broadcast of “CBS Sunday Morning,” former Trump administration U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told her if she did not resist implementing President Donald Trump’s decisions “people would die.”
In her book “With All Due Respect,” recounting a meeting with then-White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Rex Tillerson Haley wrote, “Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country.”
Reading from Haley’s book, Norah O’Donnell asked, “Tillerson went on to tell me the reason he resisted the president’s decisions was because, if he didn’t, people would die. Do you memorialize that conversation? It definitely happened?”
Haley said, “It absolutely happened. And instead of saying that to me, they should’ve been saying that to the president, not asking me to join them on their sidebar plan. It should’ve been, ‘Go tell the president what your differences are, and quit if you don’t like what he’s doing.’ But to undermine a president is really a very dangerous thing. And it goes against the Constitution, and it goes against what the American people want. And it was offensive.”
John Kelly released a statement to CBS saying, “If by resistance and stalling she means putting a staff process in place…to ensure the [president] knew all the pros and cons of what policy decision he might be contemplating so he could make an informed decision, then guilty as charged.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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