Trump snubs Haley, relationship appears finished after critical interview

Trump doesn’t respond to request for meeting after former U.S. ambassador to the UN’s interview criticizing his conduct.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Former President Donald Trump has ignored a request from former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley to meet with him to do damage control after dissing Trump in a recent interview, the news website Politico reported Thursday.

Haley apparently contacted Trump last week to request a sit-down meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, but a source familiar with the details told Politico that Trump turned her down.

The two Republicans have not spoken since Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, when Haley condemned Trump for inciting his supporters.

The breakdown between the two came after Politico published an in-depth interview with Haley on Feb. 12 in which she said the Republican Party should not have followed Trump over his unproven allegations of election fraud.

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley said in the interview. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

Haley, who is widely believed to be building up for a run at the presidency in 2024, had backed Trump’s complaints over the election outcome, saying: “I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged.”

However, that position changed after Trump supporters tried to stop Senate certification of Joe Biden as the new president and senators – both Democrat and Republican – were evacuated from the building.

“He was badly wrong with his words yesterday,” Haley said after the Capitol incident. “And it wasn’t just his words. His actions since Election Day will be judged harshly by history.”

Haley also said that in her eyes Trump was finished with politics.

“I don’t think he’s going to be in the picture. I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far,” Haley said.

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Haley painted a rosier picture of Trump, saying the “liberal media… wants to stoke a nonstop Republican civil war” and had used her comments to do so.

“The moment anyone on the right offers the slightest criticism of the 45th president, the media goes berserk,” Haley wrote, apparently trying to distance herself from her harsh criticism of Trump by also praising his achievements in foreign policy and Trump’s lightning campaign that successfully produced coronavirus vaccines in record time.

Known for cutting off anybody who does not display 100% loyalty to him, Trump did not respond to Haley’s request for a meeting to patch up their relationship.