U.S. President-elect Donald Trump chose Rep Elise Stefanik to serve as his Ambassador to the United Nations.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Rep Elise Stefanik to serve as his ambassador to the United Nations.

“Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Monday (Novermber 11, 2024) announcing his pick.

Nikki Haley, who challenged Mr. Trump for the GOP nomination, was among those who previously held the role in his first term.

Ms. Stefanik, 40, who serves as House Republican Conference Chair, has long been one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal allies in the House, and was among those discussed as a potential vice presidential choice.

This combination photo shows Nikki Haley, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, left, speaking in Taipei, Taiwan, Aug. 21, 2024, and Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaking at a campaign rally, Oct. 27, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo)

President-elect Donald Trump ruled out two of his previous Cabinet members — former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley — to be part of his upcoming administration.

Trump, 78, was elected as the 47th President of the United States. He defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, 60, in the elections held on November 5. In the first term, Trump served as the 45th President from January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021.

Also read | Donald Trump wins White House race: U.S. Election Results 2024 in Charts

“I will not be inviting former Ambassador Nikki Haley, or former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to join the Trump Administration, which is currently in formation,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

Mr. Pompeo served as the CIA Director and Secretary of State in his first term, while Ms. Haley served as his ambassador to the United Nations in the first two years of his presidency. Both his cabinet-ranking officials later entered the presidential race against him in the Republican primaries.

While Mr. Pompeo dropped from the race early, Ms. Haley was the last challenger against Trump till February this year. Later on, the two endorsed his campaign. Ms. Haley announced her support for Trump during the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin in July this year.

However, in his post, Trump thanked his two former Cabinet officials for their service.

“I very much enjoyed and appreciated working with them previously, and would like to thank them for their service to our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” Trump said.

Washington:

US President-elect Donald Trump ruled out on Saturday re-appointing two senior figures from his first administration, ex-secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley.

Writing on his Truth Social social network, Trump said he “will not be inviting” either figure to join his administration as speculation swirls about the identity of his new team.  

Pompeo had outlined a hawkish plan for Ukraine in July involving more weapons transfers and tough action against Russia’s energy sector which analysts noted on Saturday was at odds with Trump’s campaign statements.

Trump has repeatedly boasted that he could end the war in Ukraine in his first 24 hours in power and criticised American aid to Kyiv in its fight against Russia. 

Haley ran against Trump in the Republican primary this year before endorsing him, but she offered at times blunt advice such as when she urged him to “quit whining” about Democrat candidate Kamala Harris in August.

“I very much appreciated working with them previously and would like to thank them for their service to our country,” Trump wrote on Saturday.

Trump has made one cabinet appointment so far, naming his campaign manager Susie Wiles — who he calls “ice baby” due to her supposedly unflappable temperament — as his White House chief of staff.

She is the first woman to be named to the crucial White House gatekeeper role.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

Indian American Republican leader Nikki Haley on Tuesday released the several dozen delegates she had won during the party’s presidential primaries early this year for the presumptive nominee, Donald Trump.

The move by Haley comes ahead of the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin wherein Trump would formally be nominated as the party’s presidential candidate for the November 5 general election.

“The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity. Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America. We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt and get our economy back on track. I encourage my delegates to support Donald Trump next week in Milwaukee,” Haley said in a statement.

The nominating convention is a time for Republican unity. Joe Biden is not competent to serve a second term and Kamala Harris would be a disaster for America. We need a president who will hold our enemies to account, secure our border, cut our debt, and get our economy back on…

— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) July 9, 2024

Haley had won 97 delegates, as against Biden’s 2,265. A candidate needs 1,215 delegates to win the GOP’s presidential nomination. She had suspended her campaign in March.

The former US ambassador to the United Nations and South Carolina governor is not attending the RNC.

“She was not invited and she is fine with that. Trump deserves the convention he wants. She has made it clear she is voting for him and wishes him the best,” Haley’s spokesperson Chaney Denton said. 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Hollywood star Chris Evans, better known as Captain America, has finally broken his silence on the controversy surrounding an old picture of him signing what initially appeared to be an Israeli bomb. 

The picture in question features the actor and a US Air Force officer. Mr Evans is seen signing an object. Now, the actor has called it “misinformation”. 

In a now-disappeared Instagram Stories, Mr Evans revealed that the photo was clicked eight years ago during a USO tour.

Chris Evans wrote, “There’s a lot of misinformation surrounding this picture. Some clarification: This image was taken during a USO tour in 2016. I went with a group of actors, athletes and musicians to show our appreciation for our service members. The object I was asked to sign was not a bomb, or a missile, or a weapon of any kind. It’s an inert object used for training or display purposes only. You can read the quote from the Air Force in the next story.”

In the next slide, the actor added a screenshot of a report by the news agency AFP. Mr Evan has highlighted the quote by an Air Force spokesperson. It read, “The object Chris Evans is signing in the USO tour photo from 2016 is an explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) inert training aid. The object is meant to model an artillery shell and is for display and training purposes only.”

Mr Evan’s Instagram Stories were later shared by a user on Reddit. 

Posts from the fauxmoi
community on Reddit

This comes days after a picture of former US presidential hopeful Nikki Haley writing “Finish Them” on an Israeli shell surfaced online.

The pic was shared by former UN Ambassador Danny Danon, who was accompanying Ms Haley on her visit, on X (formerly Twitter) on May 28.

In his post, Mr Danny said, “‘Finish Them’. This is what my friend the former ambassador Nikki Haley wrote.”

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Nikki Haley said on May 22 that she would vote for Donald Trump in the general election, encouraging the presumptive GOP nominee to work hard to win support from those who backed her in the primary.

“I will be voting for Trump,” Ms. Haley, Trump’s former U.N. ambassador, said during an event at the Hudson Institute in Washington.

But she also made it clear that she feels Mr. Trump has to work to win over voters who supported her during her primary campaign and continue to cast votes for her in ongoing primary contests.

“Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech,” Ms. Haley added. “Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that.”

Haley shuttered her bid for the GOP nomination two months ago but did not immediately endorse Mr. Trump. Both candidates were sharply critical of each other during the primary.

Washington:

Former presidential hopeful Nikki Haley said Wednesday she will vote for Donald Trump in November’s US election, ending months of silence after quitting the contest to choose a Republican to face Joe Biden.

The former South Carolina governor, 52, abandoned her White House ambitions in March but had not previously indicated whether she would support the man who referred to her repeatedly as “birdbrain.”

Yet she continued to scoop a significant chunk of votes in presidential primary contests — underlining a persistent refusal among a sizable bloc of Republicans to get behind Trump.

“I put my priorities on a president who’s going to have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, who would secure the border — no more excuses — a president who would support capitalism and freedom, a president who understands we need less debt not more debt,” she said.

“Trump hasn’t been perfect on these policies. I’ve made that clear, many, many times. But Biden has been a catastrophe. So I will be voting for Trump.”

– ‘Zombie campaign’ –

The tenacity of the Haley vote had prompted US media to refer to her ongoing presence on the primary stage, long after the curtain came down, as a “zombie campaign.”

Trump, 77, has failed to make inroads with Haley’s moderate support, and will see her public show of support as a huge boon ahead of the Republican nominating convention in July.

The primaries laid bare Trump’s key shortcoming — his lack of appeal among the moderates, independents and voters with college degrees he will need to prevail against Biden.

Haley said, speaking Wednesday at an event for the Washington-based Hudson Institute conservative think tank, added that she was standing by her remarks urging Trump to make nice with her support base.

“Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they’re just going to be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that,” she said.

The Biden campaign had been reaching across the aisle, hoping to attract Haley voters.

It released a TV spot in April targeting the suburban battlegrounds with the message: “If you voted for Nikki Haley, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote.”

Trump — who is considering several Republicans to be his running mate in November — indicated earlier in May that he is not considering Haley for vice president.

The 77-year-old real estate tycoon has everyone guessing about whom he will pick as his running mate in the November vote.

“Nikki Haley is not under consideration for the V.P. slot, but I wish her well!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Nikki Haley was South Carolina’s governor from 2011 to 2017 and served under the Trump administration as the country’s ambassador. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is under active consideration by Donald Trump’s campaign to be his running mate, news site Axios reported on May 11, citing unidentified people familiar with the situation.

Mr. Trump could pick Ms. Haley if he were convinced she could help him win the presidency, avoid a potential prison sentence and cover tens of millions in legal bills if he loses, the report said.

Ms. Haley ended her log-shot challenge to Republican presidential frontrunner Mr. Trump in March. She said it was likely Mr. Trump — who repeatedly belittled her candidacy — would be the Republican nominee but did not endorse him.

Ms. Haley was South Carolina’s governor from 2011 to 2017 and served under the Trump administration as the country’s ambassador to the United Nations from January 2017 to December 2018.

Now that Nikki Haley has ended her U.S. presidential campaign, one person who voted for her refuses to back former President Donald Trump and plans to reluctantly vote for President Joe Biden. Another Haley primary supporter acknowledges that he was probably always a “closet Trump fan” and will vote for the former president again in November.

The former U.N. ambassador’s base was never big enough to seriously challenge Mr. Trump before he clinched a third straight Republican nomination. But in what’s shaping up to be a tight rematch between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the apparent splintering of Ms. Haley’s voters and donors could hurt Mr. Trump’s general election chances, particularly in battleground states full of suburban voters who remain dubious of a Mr. Trump return to the White House.

ALSO READ | Donald Trump’s $454 million civil fraud judgment fine slashed to $175M by New York appeals court

For now, interviews with Ms. Haley’s supporters suggest they could go in a variety of directions — some backing Mr. Trump, some going to Mr. Biden and others seeking third-party options or avoiding making a decision about the presidential race yet.

Ms. Haley has not spoken publicly since leaving the race and urging Mr. Trump to reach out to all Republicans. She has not endorsed Mr. Trump and suggested she may not at all.

“She said it’s up to him to earn the support of those who supported her, and he’s got to earn it,” said Eric Tanenblatt, a longtime GOP donor who was Ms. Haley’s Georgia campaign’s co-chairman. “Right now, I’m definitely not there. It tells me there are things that are still up in the air among other key Haley donors waiting for a sign.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Glenn Swanson caucused for Mr. Haley after seeing her campaign in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa. At the time, the retired architect said he was open to a Trump alternative. Now, he’s coming back to the candidate he supported in both 2016 and 2020, despite his concerns about the four felony indictments and other civil cases facing Mr. Trump.

“For sure I’m going to vote for Mr. Trump,” Mr. Swanson said in an interview. “In a sense I was kind of a closet Mr. Trump fan all along, but I really wanted to see if somebody else would emerge to get away from some of the drama.”

John Wynstra, a database administrator who attended that same event, had been deciding between Mr. Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis before choosing to caucus for her. Mr. Wynstra said he’s strategically supporting Mr. Trump and the party’s platform — as a stance primarily against Biden — although he seemingly left the door open to possibly supporting a third-party candidate like Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“I will vote against Joe Biden and the Democrats,” Mr. Wynstra said this week. “If Kennedy were viable and if his positions were palatable, I would consider him.”

In Ms. Haley’s home state of South Carolina, high school teacher Michael Burgess said that save an unlikely independent run by Haley or a moderate like former Rep. Liz Cheney, he would be supporting Biden and criticised Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

“I will reluctantly vote Biden,” Mr. Burgess said. “We can survive bad policy, but we cannot survive the destruction of the Constitution at the hands of a morally bankrupt dictator lover in Trump who, supported by his congressional MAGA minions, would do just that.”

Like many who were drawn to Ms. Haley, Mr. Tanenblatt, who was her Georgia campaign’s co-chairman, became disenchanted with Mr. Trump for what he called “inflammatory rhetoric,” chiefly in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by his supporters on the Capitol.

But he also says Mr. Trump’s opposition to military aid to Ukraine is a fundamental policy difference. Mr. Tanenblatt has talked individually with former Haley supporters weighing a role with No Labels, the third-party group that is moving forward with attempting a unity ticket of opposing party presidential and vice-presidential nominees.

By and large, Ms. Haley’s donors have paused, with key bundlers noting they have not heard from Mr. Trump’s team as well as their reluctance to make any decisions.

“I really think there’s a period of recalibrating for a number of us who were very involved in Nikki’s campaign. This was a calling, something bigger than any one of us,” said Simone Levinson, a Florida-based Haley fundraiser who hosted events for her in New York and Florida.

Those donors could be helpful to Mr. Trump were they to come to the former president’s side.

For now, Mr. Trump and national Republicans are lagging far behind Mr. Biden and national Democrats in fundraising, with Trump’s campaign and allied groups holding $37 million cash on hand at the end of February compared to the $155 million in Democratic coffers.

In one sign of her influence going forward, Ms. Haley ended last month with $11.5 million, just days before she suspended her campaign. That’s slightly more than the Republican National Committee at $11.3 million.

Charleston, South Carolina:

For much of her 2024 presidential campaign, Nikki Haley spoke fondly of serving under former President Donald Trump for two years as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. 

Trump, she often told voters, was “the right president at the right time.”

But when Haley suddenly found herself in a head-to-head battle with the Republican frontrunner, who hurled a bevy of insults her way, she unleashed a torrent of attacks in return. The 77-year-old Trump, she now said, was too old and too chaotic to send back to the White House for a second four-year term.

Haley’s evolution from a Trump acolyte to arch-rival in the late days of the Republican nominating race left her as the standard-bearer for the party’s dwindling anti-Trump faction. 

Her defiant stand against her former boss won her the support of some independents and moderate Republican voters, along with the backing of donors who poured tens of millions of dollars into her campaign in its final months.

Haley, 52, never seriously challenged Trump in opinion polls, and she was set to suspend her campaign on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with her plans.

By the time she decided to drop out, she had been abandoned by some former allies and left with no clear political future in a party dominated by the man who now will lead its presidential ticket. 

Even so, Haley’s ascent was notable. Stuck in single digits in polls for much of the race and overshadowed by more prominent names in a crowded field, Haley, the only woman in the Republican contest, nonetheless outlasted all other candidates and was Trump’s last remaining rival. Polls on hypothetical general election matchups showed her beating Democratic President Joe Biden.

“She pivoted from nuance to direct assault,” Chip Felkel, a veteran Republican strategist from South Carolina, said in February. 

“I wish she had done it sooner,” he added.

Haley’s political rise began in earnest in 2010, when she was elected governor of South Carolina, becoming the first woman to hold that post in the Southern state and the second person of Indian descent to serve as a U.S. governor. She served from 2011 to 2017.

When Trump ran for president in 2016, Haley backed two of his rivals before saying she would support Trump if he became the Republican nominee, even though she was “not a fan” of his.

She worked for Trump for two relatively drama-free years at the U.N. and played a key role in withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which was signed under Democratic President Barack Obama and had been unpopular among conservatives.

She initially said she would not run for president in 2024 if Trump made a bid. When she changed her mind and decided to launch her campaign in February 2023, she phoned Trump as a courtesy and he later recounted giving her his blessing.

Haley stuck to a policy-focused message on the campaign trail and tried to distinguish herself as the most capable contender on foreign policy. While almost all the Republican candidates staked out a tough position on China, Haley’s unabashed support for Ukraine represented a contrast with Trump, who said the conflict was not central to U.S. national security.

It was not until a series of combative debate performances starting in late August that she gained any real traction.

Several major donors, including hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin and Wall Street investor Stanley Druckenmiller, started looking her way, particularly as the campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once seen as Republicans’ best shot to move on from Trump, floundered. 

In November, AFP Action, a political advocacy network backed by billionaire Charles Koch, endorsed Haley. The group deployed an army of thousands of on-the-ground door knockers and organizers and blanketed the airwaves on her behalf.

By December, Haley had surpassed DeSantis in most national polls and replaced the former governor in the No. 2 spot, though Trump’s massive lead was never threatened.

Haley had complimented the former president as much as she criticized him during the race, so much so that she often was asked if she was angling to be his running mate – a question she called “highly offensive.”

But as the field narrowed from roughly a dozen major candidates to just Haley and Trump by the end of January, their attacks on each other escalated.

Trump called her a “birdbrain” and “brain-dead,” and mocked the dress she wore at her New Hampshire primary night party. He frequently referred to her, in speeches and on social media, by mispronounced and misspelled versions of her birth name, Nimarata. 

At a campaign event in New Hampshire, he said Haley, the daughter of immigrants from India, was not “presidential timber.”

Haley returned fire, bashing Trump for spending more than $50 million in campaign funds on legal fees and calling him a “grumpy old man.”

She said he was a liar and implied he was going senile. Her campaign team called him a “chicken” for refusing to debate her and even put one of her staff in an inflatable chicken suit at some events to drive the point home.

Haley promised to “make America normal again” – a jab at Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” or MAGA, movement.

Her refusal to bow out after losses in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire incensed the former president, who lined up support from all but one member of South Carolina’s congressional delegation to try to show her lack of popularity in her home state. After she lost there, too, she soldiered on, saying that voters deserved a choice, even as she seemed to accept the race was slipping out of reach.

Haley embraced her status as an outsider in the waning days of the campaign, telling voters she didn’t need the support of other elected officials.

“All those congressional members around him are the same ones that haven’t done anything for us,” she said at one campaign stop in February in South Carolina.

“Trump can have ’em.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)