Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly attempted to undermine President Donald Trump’s decisions in an attempt to “save the country,” according to a new book by former U.S. ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley .
The accusations come in Haley’s new memoir, according to a Sunday report from The Washington Post . In the book, Haley alleges that on one occasion, the former Exxon CEO even suggested that “people would die” if the president’s actions were left unchecked, according to the book obtained in advance by the newspaper.
Tillerson could not be reached for comment, according to The Washington Post.
Haley alleges that Tillerson and former White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly attempted to recruit her to work against the president in order to what she says they believed was to “save the country.” Haley reports in the memoir, titled With All Due Respect, that she refused their requests, believing that she and other members of the Trump administration had a duty to carry out his wishes since he was elected president by voters.
“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” Haley wrote, according to The Washington Post .
“It was their decisions, not the president’s, that were in the best interests of America, they said. The president didn’t know what he was doing.”
Haley detailed a specific spat in which Kelly and Tillerson specifically worried about a suggestion from the president to withhold funding from the UN agency that supports Palestinians, The Washington Post reported.
Specifically, Haley – the former governor of South Carolina – said she supported most of the president’s foreign policy decisions that others in the White House reportedly found controversial. These decisions included Trump’s plan to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris climate accord, and relocating the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, The Washington Post reports.
In an interview with The Post, Haley also reportedly rejected Democratic efforts to impeach the president, noting that while she disagrees with the president seeking political investigations from foreign nations, she does not believe that Trump committed any impeachable offenses.
Haley also reportedly detailed a few disagreements she had with the president, including one in 2015. At the time, the then-governor had to deal with the case of a white supremacist who killed nine black people in a church in Charleston. Haley says she called the president – who in the past had attributed violence by white supremacists as violence by “both sides” – to express disagreement.
As The Washington Post noted, Haley had never made any of that disagreement public.
