But the Trump ally-turned-enemy keeps growing. Here is a partial list of former Trump administration officials who have spoken out against our American President since ending their affiliation with the oval office:
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The Fix Analysis
Nikki Haley joins a growing list of Trump officials who criticize Trump on their way out the door
Nikki Haley dishes zingers at Al Smith dinner
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U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley roasted allies and opponents alike at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner in New York on Oct. 18. (Reuters)
By Amber Phillips
October 19 at 12:55 PM
She was one of the few Trump administration officials to leave on her own terms and with reputation intact. And yet that hasn’t stopped outgoing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley from joining a growing list of White House officials criticizing the boss on the way out the door.
At a lighthearted charity dinner Thursday night, Haley made a bunch of jokes about the administration, as is custom at this event: “He said if I get stuck for laughs, just brag about his accomplishments. It really killed at the U.N., I got to tell you.”
Trump’s claims of administration’s success prompt laughter at U.N.
President Trump elicited laughter at the start of his address to world leaders Sept. 25 at the U.N. General Assembly in New York. (Reuters)
But then Haley got serious. Very serious. What she said next seemed directly aimed at President Trump’s increasingly alarmist rhetoric about Democrats being the party of “crime” or opponents of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh being “evil.”
The Post's John Wagner wrote up her remarks:
In our toxic political environment, I’ve heard some people in both parties describe their opponents as enemies or evil. In America, our political opponents are not evil. In South Sudan, where rape is routinely used as a weapon of war — that is evil. In Syria, where the dictator uses chemical weapons to murder innocent children — that is evil. In North Korea, where American student Otto Warmbier was tortured to death — that was evil.
In the last two years, I’ve seen true evil. We have some serious political differences here at home. But our opponents are not evil. They’re just our opponents.
Forget anonymous New York Times op-eds from within the administration. Haley and these outgoing officials are putting their names to criticism of the president, sometimes while they still had their jobs.
Rex Tillerson: Don’t be like Trump. That, writes The Fix’s Aaron Blake, is what it sounded like Trump’s former secretary of state, who was fired by tweet — and apparently found out while using the toilet — seemed to say in his final speech to State Department employees. “This can be a very mean-spirited town. But you don’t have to choose to participate in that. Each of us get to choose the person we want to be, and the way we want to be treated, and the way we will treat others.”
H.R. McMaster: Trump’s former national security adviser also criticized the president as he was on his way out. In his last public remarks before leaving, McMaster appeared to directly confront Trump’s approach to Russia, saying: “Some nations have looked the other way in the face of these threats. Russia brazenly and implausibly denies its actions, and we have failed to impose sufficient costs.”
It did not seem like a coincidence that, just hours earlier, Trump had said, “Nobody is tougher on Russia than I am.”
David Shulkin: “It should not be this hard to serve your country.” That was the parting shot Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin left Washington with. He wrote that in a New York Times op-ed hours after he was fired by Trump on Twitter, and he also gave an interview to NPR. Rarely has an outgoing administration official been so vocal.
His criticism was twofold, and it focused less on Trump than on the people hired to serve Trump’s interests at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Shulkin said that they were maneuvering to privatize VA over his objections and that they overplayed what critics and the inspector general at VA called an ethically questionable trip with his wife to Europe to try to fire him.
“I was not allowed to put up an official statement or to even respond to this by the White House,” he told NPR. “ … I think this was really just being used in a political context to try to make sure that I wasn’t as effective as a leader moving forward.”
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