Nikki Haley has a blunt assessment of Donald Trump’s choices of Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for high-profile roles in his administration.
Haley, who was Trump’s most significant Republican primary opponent, argued Wednesday on her radio show against confirming Gabbard as director of national intelligence and Kennedy to lead Health and Human Services.
Haley first went after Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress and 2020 presidential candidate who endorsed Trump this year before announcing she was a Republican. The nomination has also raised concerns from some traditional GOP foreign policy thinkers.
“She opposed ending the Iran nuclear deal. She opposed sanctions on Iran. She opposed designating the Iran military as terrorists who say death to America every single day,” Haley said on SiriusXM’s Nikki Haley Live. “She said that Donald Trump turned the U.S. into Saudi Arabia's prostitute. This is going to be the future head of our national intelligence.”
Haley added that it was “disgusting” that Gabbard, a military veteran, went to Syria in 2017 “for a photo op with Bashar al-Assad" while he was attacking his own people and has expressed skepticism that the dictator was behind chemical attacks on his own people.
Haley said DNI was “not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.”
On Kennedy, Haley argued that he is “not a health guy,” despite having spent years raising concerns about the food, medicines and vaccines available to American consumers. He should face “hard questions” from senators, she said.
“He's a liberal Democrat, environmental attorney trial lawyer who will now be overseeing 25 percent of our federal budget and has no background in healthcare,” Haley said. “So some of you may think RFK is cool, some of you may like that he questions what's in our food and what's in our vaccines, but we don't know, when he is given reins to an agency, what decisions he's going to make behind the scenes.”
Trump earlier this month announced that he won’t be asking Haley, his former U.N. ambassador, to serve in his second administration.
