Secret Haley tales

DAYS before her resignation as US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley gave a private talk to the Council for National Policy — the group the New York Times has called a “little-known club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country” — and she reportedly revealed behind-the-scenes details of her time in the Trump administration. The talk was so secretive, the group’s president apparently told the gathering that unauthorized recording was forbidden, and joked, “If you’re caught, you will be taken to a room and be forced to watch Rachel Maddow.” A Harper’s reporter, Max Blumenthal, managed to infiltrate the session and reported that Haley told the gathering that she was initially offered the job of secretary of state but that, “I thought the job should go to someone who didn’t have the same learning curve.” When she was offered the UN role, Haley reportedly recalled, “I told [Trump], ‘Honestly, I don’t even know what the UN does,’ ” to which the crowd “erupted with sympathetic laughter and applause,” Blumenthal writes. She also told the highly secretive group that she met with Henry Kissinger every two months, and that she urged Trump not to call North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “Rocket Man.” “I told the president, ‘This is the UN; it’s a little more formal of a setting than a campaign rally,’ ” she remembered. When Trump insisted, “I said, ‘OK, Mr. President, you’re the boss.’ ” Hours after the speech, she met with Uganda’s president — and the African leader called Kim “Rocket Man.” Blumenthal was bounced from the conference.