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Replacing Pence with Nikki Haley
En route to al-Asad Air Base in Iraq on a secretive flight in late 2018, Bolton writes, Trump "raised the widespread political rumor he would dump [Vice President Mike] Pence from the ticket in 2020 and run instead with [then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki] Haley, asking what I thought."
Conventional wisdom at the gossip-prone White House, Bolton asserts in the book, was that "Ivanka [Trump] and [Jared] Kushner favored this approach, which tied in with Haley's leaving her position as UN Ambassador in December 2018, thus allowing her to do some politicking around the country before being named to the ticket in 2020."
The alleged calculus was that Haley could boost Trump among disaffected women voters, at the possible cost of losing evangelicals partial to Pence.
"I explained it was a bad idea to jettison someone loyal," Bolton writes.
In a separate episode, Bolton says, Trump offered a head-turning anecdote involving then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
While waiting in the Oval Office for a call from France's president, Bolton claims, "Trump railed away about Tillerson and how much he disliked him, recalling a dinner with Tillerson and Haley. Haley, said Trump, had some disagreement with Tillerson, who responded, 'Don't ever talk to me that way again.' Before Haley could say anything, Tillerson said, 'You're nothing but a c--t, and don't ever forget it.'"
Bolton, however, writes that he suspected Trump wasn't telling the truth.
"In most Administrations, that would have gotten Tillerson fired, so I wondered if he ever actually said it," Bolton says. "And if he hadn't, why did Trump tell me he had?"
Bolton adds that Kushner had told him Trump thought he had done a "great job" early on in his tenure, which to Bolton "meant I would probably make it through the end of my fourth day on the job."
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Posted by Erin Burnett to Trang Ánh Nam at June 18, 2020 at 6:58 PM
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