President-elect Donald Trump has chosen South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley to become the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. To many this was a surprising pick for Mr. Trump, considering the harsh rhetoric Governor Haley provided against Mr. Trump in the Republican primaries and her endorsement of Marco Rubio. Trump previously noted Haley as being, “very, very, weak on illegal immigration.” So in essence, it was a surprise in the political world with Mr. Trump, named Haley as the ambassador to the United Nations.
Nikki Haley
Governor Haley graduated from Clemson University with a Bachelors of Science in Accounting, and began her career at FCR corporation, then moving on to her mother’s business Exotica International. Governor Haley began her political career as a member of the board of directors of the Orangeburg County in 1998.
Her views include lowering taxes, she is pro-life and she believes immigration laws should be strictly enforced. In April of 2016, she described restroom legislation for transgender individuals as unnecessary. One of her most recognizable decisions was calling for the removal of the confederate flag off the South Carolina Sate Capitol and its grounds and signed it into removal in July 2015. This decision was followed after nine African-Americans were shot and killed at the historically black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The white supremacist charged in the massacre, Dylann S. Roof, had posed with the Confederate battle flag in pictures.
Samantha Power
The current U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations is Samantha Power, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2013. Power’s resume doesn’t begin there; as a Yale and Harvard Law graduate, her resume includes working as a war correspondent covering the Yugoslav Wars, winning a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize for “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”
Power also had involvement in the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign with President Obama, serving on president-elect Obama’s State Department transition team and serving on the National Security Council as a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. On the National Security Council, Power focused on UN reform, LGBT and women’s rights, the promotion of religious freedom and the protection of religious minorities, human trafficking and democracy and human rights.
As the ambassador, Power is known for her advocacy for human rights and supporting efforts for the US military to be deployed to fight human rights issues. The United Sates Mission to the United Nations site notes Power as someone who works to “advance U.S. interests, promote and defend universal values, and address pressing global challenges to global peace, security and prosperity.”
United Nations Ambassador
According to the official United States Mission to the United Nations website the ambassador is the “permanent representative to the United Nations and is a member of the president’s cabinet." The ambassador is responsible for keeping the state department up to date on issues presented at the United Nations, and communicating with the secretary of state and president on those issues.
This brings to question: is Governor Haley ready for the job? With much less foreign relations experience than Ambassador Power, will she be an effective ambassador for President-elect Trump? Was this selection just so the critics of president-elect Trump on the lack of diversity on his cabinet would be silenced?
