New York: US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has called the online chatter of her having an affair with President Donald Trump are “highly offensive” and “disgusting”. The rumours were sparked by “Fire and Fury” writer Michael Wolff, who hinted on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” last week that he was “absolutely sure” Trump is having an affair.
Wolff in his book wrote that the "president had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future.”Haley said these rumours were typical of the challenges faced by successful women who manage to work their way up to positions of power.“It is absolutely not true,"' Haley said in an interview for POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast.
"At every point in my life, I’ve noticed that if you speak your mind and you’re strong about it and you say what you believe, there are a small percentage of people that resent that. And the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows — lies or not — to diminish you”.“I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there,” she said, referring to a flight from Washington to Long Island in late July.
“He says that I’ve been talking a lot with the president in the Oval about my political future. I’ve never talked once to the president about my future and I am never alone with him.”“So the idea that these things come out, that’s a problem,” she said.During the 40-minute conversation at the US mission to the UN in Manhattan, Haley discussed how the daughter of Indian immigrants raised in small-town Bamburg, South Carolina, got into American politics, wending her way from the Statehouse to the governorship of the Palmetto State and now, to Turtle Bay, where she represents a president. Haley was born in Amritsar as Nimrata Nikki Randhawa. Haley’s family shifted to Canada after her father received a scholarship from the University of British Columbia. Later the family migrated to South Carolina.(UNI)