U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley clearly had the sense she had gotten the green light on imposing new sanctions on Russia when she announced them on national TV over the weekend. Unfortunately for her, Trump was glued to the screen. The New York Times writes:
The president grew angry, according to an official informed about the moment. As far as he was concerned, he had decided no such thing. It was not the first time Mr. Trump has yelled at the television over something he saw Ms. Haley saying.
Uh-oh. And so began the public shaming of yet another Trump official who had been given one signal only to be rebuffed by Trump—but this shaming had an extra special sexist bent.
“She got ahead of the curve,” Larry Kudlow, the president’s national economics adviser, told reporters at a briefing in Florida before Mr. Trump welcomed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan to his Mar-a-Lago estate. “She’s done a great job. She’s a very effective ambassador, but there might have been some momentary confusion about that.”
That's Kudlow sprinkling his explanation with a little touch of "Oh, there she goes again, that dizzy broad." Haley, who certainly doesn't see serving in the Trump administration as the pinnacle of her political career, wasn't having it.
"With all due respect, I don't get confused," she said in a statement to Fox News.
According to several officials, the White House did not inform Ms. Haley that it had changed course on sanctions, leaving her to hang out alone.
Huh. Imagine that. Kudlow later corrected himself.
“As it turns out, she was basically following what she thought was policy. The policy was changed and she wasn’t told about it, so she was in a box.”
The big question now is, who's in the bigger dog house for making Trump and his administration look totally incompetent on the world stage... again: Haley or Kudlow?
Haley's the right bet. She's a woman and she's not a Fox News personality—so the odds are, Trump sides with Kudlow.
But in terms of the bigger picture, this was just one more episode where Trump grew enraged when his administration was portrayed publicly as being tough on Russia.
Hmm. Can't imagine why he's so consistently touchy, touchy about that.