President Trump’s former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley asserted that today’s divisive political climate is becoming “a choice between citizenship and victimhood.”
“When we retreat into identity and grievance politics, we make the choice for victimhood over citizenship. By constantly blaming others, we reject personal responsibility for ourselves, our families, and our communities,” Haley said Tuesday night at the American Enterprise Institute gala in Washington.
“This choice of victimhood takes us further away from our exceptionalism,” she said.
Haley, 47, accused Democrats of attacking the history of America as a “lie” when they argue “America was founded not in freedom, but in oppression.”
“Some are attempting to redefine American citizenship itself,” she said. “Ronald Reagan once asked Americans to choose between being citizens or subjects. It was the Sixties. Government and liberalism were on the march. The question fit the times.
“Today, we face a different choice. It is a choice between citizenship and victimhood. Our politics is becoming a contest over who’s got the biggest grievance. Who’s getting the short end of the stick. Who’s being taken advantage of by a rigged system.”
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Haley also addressed the anonymous senior Trump administration official who wrote a scathing op-ed about the president in the New York Times last year and has a book coming out next month detailing “the danger he poses.” Haley, who has denied writing the op-ed, said there were others in the administration who undermined Trump.
“When I was in the administration, I served alongside colleagues who believed that the best thing to do for America was to undermine and obstruct the president. Some wrote about it anonymously in the New York Times. Others just did it. They sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. I sincerely believed they weren’t,” Haley said.
She then condemned those officials, saying they are “not free” to push their personal agendas because Trump “was the choice of the people, in accordance with our founding charter.”
“No policy disagreement with him, no matter how heartfelt, justifies undermining the lawful authority that is vested in his office by the Constitution,” she said. “What’s at stake is not President Trump’s policies. What’s at stake is the Constitution.”
Haley served as the governor of South Carolina before she moved to New York to serve in the Trump administration. She resigned from her role as a diplomat in late 2018.
Haley has since joined the Boeing Co. board, returned to a nonprofit she created to address education in rural parts of South Carolina, and launched a policy group. Her book, With All Due Respect: Defending America with Grit and Grace, is set to be published in November.
