Nikki Haley, the former Ambassador to the United Nations and a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate, has publicly voiced her disapproval of President-elect Donald Trump's decision to assign high-profile roles within his administration to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
Both of these nominations have been met with resistance due to concerns about their backgrounds.
According to CBS News, Haley expressed her concerns about Kennedy's appointment as the head of the Health and Human Services Department, citing his lack of healthcare expertise and his previous affiliation with the Democratic Party. "Who is RFK Jr? He's not a health guy, he has raised questions about what's in our food, and I am right there with him," Haley stated during her appearance on SiriusXM's "Nikki Haley Live." She continued, "That's not his background. He is not educated, trained or practiced in healthcare at all." She also referred to him as a "liberal Democrat" on multiple occasions.
Kennedy has a history of questioning vaccines, although he recently stated that he is not anti-vaccine. However, public health experts have raised concerns about his history of misleading statements regarding vaccine safety, fearing that he could potentially undermine years of progress in increasing vaccination rates against life-threatening diseases.
Haley, who initially ran against Trump in the GOP primaries before endorsing him, also took issue with Gabbard's appointment as director of national intelligence. She criticized Gabbard, a former congresswoman from Hawaii, for her past comments on human rights abuses in Syria, which Haley believes echo Russian propaganda. "This is a job for an honest broker without any pronounced policy biases," Haley asserted. "She went to Syria in 2017 for a photo-op with [Syrian President Bashir] al-Assad while he was massacring his own people ... this to me was disgusting." Haley added, "Everything she said about that was Russian talking points, Russian propaganda."
Gabbard defended her 2017 meeting with Assad as a "fact-finding mission," and later described him as a "brutal dictator." In 2019, she voiced her opposition to U.S. involvement in Syria's civil war, stating that Assad "is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States." The Trump transition team has yet to comment on these criticisms. Gabbard, who lacks experience in intelligence, is also against U.S. intervention in the war in Ukraine.
The Senate is set to provide advice and consent during the confirmation process once Trump officially nominates Kennedy and Gabbard. Meanwhile, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who was Trump's choice for attorney general, withdrew his nomination amidst a House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct and illegal drug use.
Login