Rex Tillerson Hits Back At Haley’s Claim He Undermined Trump: She Didn’t Even Attend Most Of My Meetings

First, a reminder of what this is all about:

Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, has been causing quite a stir with her new memoir, in which she recounts how, during her time in the Trump administration, other top officials lobbied her to help them undermine the president.

In “With All Due Respect,” Ms. Haley writes that Rex Tillerson, then the secretary of state, and John Kelly, then the White House chief of staff, considered some of Mr. Trump’s policies so harebrained that they ignored his directives and began recruiting other aides to derail his agenda.

“Kelly and Tillerson confided in me that when they resisted the president, they weren’t being insubordinate, they were trying to save the country,” she writes. “Tillerson went on to tell me the reason he resisted the president’s decisions was because, if he didn’t, people would die.”

Tillerson pushes back against Haley: “During my service to our country as the Secretary of State, at no time did I, nor to my direct knowledge did anyone else serving along with me, take any actions to undermine the President.”

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) November 12, 2019

More from Tillerson: “Ambassador Haley was rarely a participant in my many meetings and is not in a position to know what I may or may not have said to the President.”

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) November 12, 2019