United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley (centre) said Thursday that there's zero truth to a rumor about a romantic liaison between her and President Donald Trump (right). Photo / Getty Images
United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley (centre) said Thursday that there's zero truth to a rumor about a romantic liaison between her and President Donald Trump (right). Photo / Getty Images
United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley flatly denied on Thursday that she's having an affair with Donald Trump, throwing a sharp elbow at "Fire and Fury" author Michael Wolff.
Haley has been at the center of a Washington parlor game over who Wolff was hinting the president was "f***ing" after he made the explosive claim on an HBO program that the president is currently having an affair.
The former South Carolina governor said during a Politico podcast interview that the rumor, which the author freely fed last week, is "highly offensive" and "disgusting."
"It is absolutely not true," she fumed.
Wolff said during a taping last week of "Real Time with Bill Maher" that he omitted an episode from his bombshell-laden book despite being "absolutely sure" it was true, reports Daily Mail.
"It was so incendiary that I just didn't have the ultimate proof," Wolff explained, later adding that he "didn't have the 'blue dress'."
That was a reference to the semen-stained garment that 1990s White House intern Monica Lewinsky kept as evidence that she had a sexual fling with Bill Clinton.
"You just have to read between the lines," Wolff told Maher. "It's toward the end of the book. You'll know it. Now that I've told you, when you hit that paragraph you're going to say, 'Bingo'."
Wolff said last week that he had stumbled onto something "so incendiary" that he only hinted at it in his book because he didn't have enough evidence to spell it out. Photo / AP
Maher asked if the hint was about "somebody [Trump's] f***ing now."
"It is," Wolff responded.
The political Twittersphere quickly erupted with Washington's new guessing game, and settled on a paragraph that claimed Trump "had been spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future."
Haley said Thursday that Wolff's reporting "is absolutely not true,"
"I have literally been on Air Force One once, and there were several people in the room when I was there," she protested. And that was a short hop last July from Washington to Long Island.
"He says that I've been talking a lot with the president in the Oval [Office] about my political future. I've never talked once to the president about my future and I am never alone with him."
United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. Photo / AP
Haley said Wolff's insinuation is a symptom of the sexist atmosphere successful women endure when they have to dismiss accusations of sleeping their way to the top.
"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," she said.
Wolff's book has been a commercial success, selling more than 1.7 million copies.
But it's become a critical laughingstock, with political journalists and commentators picking apart his reporting – especially after an appearance this month on MSNBC.
