U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley struck back at author Michael Wolff after he strongly implied she is having an affair with her boss, President Donald Trump.
Wolff told HBO's Bill Maher last week that he is "absolutely sure" Trump is having an affair while in office, but the author did not have the evidence to prove it. Wolff said that he left a clue in his book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, and that "when you hit that paragraph, you're gonna say, 'Bingo.'"
Readers have seized upon one passage in Fire and Fury, where Trump is described as "spending a notable amount of private time with Haley on Air Force One and was seen to be grooming her for a national political future."
Haley responded in an interview on Thursday that the allegation is "absolutely not true," and said the rumor is an example of the sexist abuse many powerful women have to put up with.
"I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there," she told Politico's "Women Rule" podcast.
"He [Wolff] says that I've been talking a lot with the president in the Oval [Office] about my political future. I've never talked once to the president about my future and I am never alone with him," Haley continued.
"At every point in my life, I've noticed that if you speak your mind and you're strong about it and you say what you believe, there is a small percentage of people that resent that and the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows, lies or not," she addd.
Journalists have criticized Wolff's book for factual errors and its over-reliance on questionable sources like former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon. In response to those criticisms, Wolff said on MSNBC that if a contested claim in the book "rings true, it is true."