Nikki Haley, the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations, shot back at President Donald Trump’s new top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, on Tuesday after Kudlow said “there might have been some momentary confusion” when Haley claimed Sunday that the United States would sanction Russia.
“With all due respect, I don’t get confused,” she said, according to Fox News’ Dana Perino. Perino said around 6:00 pm ET that’d she’d been in touch with Haley “in the last half hour.” The news broke on the show Perino co-hosts, Fox News’ “The Five.”
The confusion — or lack thereof — began when Haley said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday that the United States would soon sanction Russia for its support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Secretary Mnuchin will be announcing those [Russian sanctions] on Monday, if he hasn’t already, and they will go directly to any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use,” Haley said Sunday.
The Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump told advisers he was “upset” and “not yet comfortable executing” sanctions later on Sunday, and by Monday, White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the paper: “We are considering additional sanctions on Russia and a decision will be made in the near future.”
Kudlow, still in the early days as Trump’s chief economic adviser, told reporters Tuesday that Haley had gotten “ahead of the curve.”
“She’s done a great job,” Kudlow added. “She’s a very effective ambassador, but there might have been some momentary confusion about that. But if you talk to Steve Mnuchin at Treasury and so forth, he will tell you the same thing. They are in charge of this. We have had sanctions. Additional sanctions are under consideration but not have been determined.”
Haley, Perino said, was responding to that comment.
