Washington, Jan 27: Terming the rumours of an affair with President Donald Trump as ‘disgusting and offensive’, US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Friday said that some people try and throw arrows when you speak your mind. She said that the affair rumours sparked by the “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff shows exactly the kinds of accusations women in power face in the workplace.
“This isn’t something that’s just happened as a Cabinet member: I saw this as a legislator, I saw this when I was governor, I see it now, I see them do it to other women,” Haley said. “Most men respect women but there is a small group of men, that if you just do your job and you try and do it well and you are outspoken about it, they resent it. And they think the only option is to bring you down,” she added.
“But it goes to a bigger issue that we need to always be conscious of. At every point in my life, I’ve noticed that if you speak your mind and you’re strong about it and you say what you believe, there is a small percentage of people that resent that. And the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows — lies or not — to diminish you,” Haley said.
Slamming Wolff for his assertion that she has been spending a lot of private time with Donald Trump on his presidential plane and in the Oval Office, Haley said, “I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there. He (Wolff) says that I’ve been talking a lot with the president in the Oval about my political future. I’ve never talked once to the president about my future and I am never alone with him.”
The 46-year-old US Ambassador said that she has faced such rumours in past and is ready to face them again. “Do I like it? No. Is it right? No. Is it going to slow me down? Not at all,” she said, adding, “Any time this has happened, it only makes me fight harder, it only makes me work harder. And I do it for the sake of other women that are behind me.”
The US President Trump said the book was “full of lies.”