On Oct. 9, 2018, President Trump’s UN Ambassador, Nikki Haley, resigned. She is another person in the long list of people who have resigned from the Trump White House. The news of Nikki Haley’s resignation happened just weeks after President Trump gave his address to the UN on Tuesday, Sept. 25. According to CNN, Trump bragged about himself to the UN and said, “In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.” The response from the UN was that of laughter, which prompted Trump to then respond, “So true. I didn’t expect that reaction, but that’s OK.” According to CNN, President Trump gave the announcement, and praised Haley as a “fantastic person” and said, “
According to CNN, President Trump gave the announcement, and praised Haley as a “fantastic person” and said, “She’s done a fantastic job and we’ve done a fantastic job together. We’ve solved a lot of problems and we’re in the process of solving a lot of problems.” There has been speculation about why Nikki Haley resigned as the UN Ambassador, and two sources familiar with Haley’s relationship with President Trump informed CNN that, “she had lost clout with the President in recent months.” One White House official told CNN that President Trump has begun working on a list of people to succeed Haley as UN ambassador, but has not shared it widely. Some of the names tossed around as Haley’s replacement, according to CNN: “Trump’s former deputy national security adviser, Dina Powell, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell and senior adviser and daughter of the President, Ivanka Trump.”
This new revelation has changed the United States’ relationship with the UN, and their relationship has already been off to a rough start. One of the major things that caused a shift in the relationship between the UN and U.S., prior to Nikki Haley’s resignation, was the announcement that the U.S. was leaving the UN Human Rights Council in June of 2018. The U.S. withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council on the basis of the Council being biased to the U.S. and its ally Israel. Even before that, in 2017, the U.S. relationship changed with the UN, when President Trump announced the U.S. was leaving the Paris Agreement after Syria embraced the Paris Agreement, according to the Washington Post. The Paris Agreement was a landmark agreement met in 2015 to combat climate change and help spur investment in a sustainable, low-carbon future. According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Paris Agreement’s aim is to, “strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
Nikki Haley’s resignation as the U.S. Ambassador for the United Nations is just another bump in the road in the relationship between the UN, the U.S. and President Trump. In the coming weeks, President Trump should be cautious and listen to his advisors as he begins the process of selecting a new UN Ambassador.
Photo credit: Stephanie Keith via Getty Images