U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley was initially offered a different position in President Donald Trump’s administration — secretary of state.
But she reportedly turned it down.
Haley, the former governor of South Carolina who backed two of Trump’s opponents in the months leading up to the 2016 election, recently told CNN that she said no to Trump’s job offer because she didn’t think she was qualified to lead American diplomacy at that level.
“I’m very aware of when things are right and when they are not,” she told CNN. “I just thought he could find someone better.”
But Trump didn’t want to take no for an answer. He asked his former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to reach out again with a different job offer: U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
She told CNN she was interested in the position, but she had some conditions. She wanted to be considered part of the administration, like previous ambassadors had been, and she wanted to be able to speak her mind when she felt she needed to.
“I said, ‘I am a policy girl, I want to be part of the decision-making process,’” she said, telling CNN about her conversation with Trump. “He said, ‘done.’ And I said, ‘I don’t want to be a wallflower or a talking head. I want to be able to speak my mind.’ He said, ‘That is why I asked you to do this.’ In all honesty, I didn’t think they were going to take me up on everything I asked for. And they gave me all that. So how do you turn that down?”
When she arrived in New York she said she spent a lot of time catching up with the “massive learning curve” she faced in the new gig, saying it was “a lot of reading” and “a lot of deep dives.”
Despite her position in the Trump administration, Haley hasn’t always been loyal to the President.
While serving as governor of South Carolina, Haley backed then-presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and threw her weight behind Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) during the general election.
She led efforts to remove Confederate flags from her state capitol building after a white supremacist killed nine people at the Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. She was reportedly critical of Trump and his response to a violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counter-protester was killed.
