In a speech in front of the Council for National Policy, Nikki Haley praised Trump’s branding of Kim Jong-un as Rocket Man.
Haley had been scheduled to speak to the CNP for a half hour, but as she completed her scripted address and took a seat for an off-the-cuff Q&A with Tony Perkins, the CNP’s president, she appeared in no hurry to leave. Lapping up the council’s adulation, Haley stayed over her time for an extended series of candid, and at times disturbing, recollections of Trump’s campaign of maximum pressure against North Korea. She began by recounting a debate with the president on his planned remarks before the UN General Assembly in September 2017. When she learned that Trump planned to denigrate the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as “Rocket Man,†she said she urged him to remove the line.
“I told the president, ‘This is the UN; it’s a little more formal of a setting than a campaign rally,’†Haley remembered, holding back laughter. But Trump insisted that he liked the ring of the insult, she said.
“So I said, ‘Okay, Mr. President, you’re the boss,’†Haley recalled. She said that during a meeting with the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, a few hours after Trump’s tirade, the African leader casually referred to Kim as “Rocket Man.†The exchange was clear proof in her mind of Trump’s masterful salesmanship.
This is another example of Trump using what the establishment viewed as unpresidential as a way to impact the world how he wants. No, establishment politician would’ve used this type of language and therefore wouldn’t have been as successful as Donald Trump.
This also shows how Trump changed the mind of someone in Nikki Haley who was an early Trump critic.
