White House quarrel erupts
PALM BEACH: An internal White House quarrel over the timing of new Russia sanctions played out in public when the new economic adviser suggested UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was suffering from “momentary confusion” — Ms Haley retorted: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”
The feud appeared to quieten down after economic adviser Larry Kudlow called Ms Haley to apologise on Tuesday afternoon, a White House official said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private discussions.
Earlier Tuesday, Mr Kudlow told reporters during a briefing in Florida that Ms Haley “got ahead of the curve” when she said the US would be slapping new sanctions on Russia on Monday in retaliation for the country’s support for Syria’s Assad government after its latest suspected chemical attack.
Mr Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, said additional sanctions are under consideration but have yet to be implemented. Of Ms Haley, he said, “There might have been some momentary confusion about that.”
Ms Haley then issued a terse statement to Fox News: “With all due respect, I don’t get confused.”
The dispute between Ms Haley’s team and the White House had been playing out largely behind the scenes since Ms Haley said on Sunday on CBS’ Face The Nation that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin would be announcing new sanctions directed at companies associated with Syria’s chemical weapons program on Monday, “if he hasn’t already”.
The White House had been struggling to explain Ms Haley’s remarks amid reports that President Donald Trump put the brakes on the new sanctions. Several administration officials have disputed that characterisation, saying Ms Haley was “out of the loop”.
Three senior administration officials said there were several attempts to get Ms Haley to back off or clarify her comments, but she refused.
The officials said that, under the plan conceived last week, the sanctions would have been announced Friday night, at the same time US, French, and British forces launched a missile strike on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons facilities. But the sanctions were not ready in time for Mr Trump’s Friday night statement, so they were delayed.
The officials said a decision was then made to announce the sanctions as an answer to Russia’s response to the strikes. But that plan was re-evaluated and then put on hold over the weekend as it became clear that Russia’s response was less robust than anticipated. The officials were not authorised to discuss private administration deliberations publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
A National Security Council memorandum sent overnight Friday said the new sanctions would be announced soon, but it did not specify a date. Over the next 36 hours, officials began to delve deeper into the proposed sanctions and decided to hold off on anything imminent, but Ms Haley was unaware, the officials said.
On Monday, a new memo went out from the NSC saying that additional sanctions were under consideration, but no decision had been made. In the face of Ms Haley’s refusal to clarify on Sunday, a memo was sent to her suggesting Ms again that she do so, the officials said.