10/12/18

This morning began with a surprise resignation from the White House. Nikki Haley, the U. S. ambassador to the United Nations, says she will step down by the end of the year.

When she and President Trump spoke to reporters at the White House today, they took turns praising each other. She's done an incredible job. She's a fantastic person, very importantly, but she also is somebody that gets it.

And Haley tried, preemptively, to answer a question about her future. For all of you that are going to ask about 2020, no. I am not running for 2020.

I can promise you what I'll be doing is campaigning for this one. So I look forward to supporting the president in the next election.

All right. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins me now to talk about all of this. Hey, Mara. Hi, Ailsa.

So why now? Why is Haley stepping down now? Well, that is a really good question.

We don't know exactly why now, but we do know that she wrote her resignation letter six days ago, which would have been just as President Trump was attacking Christine Blasey Ford.

That might not have looked so good if she'd resigned then. She says she's term eliminating yourself. She's going to go into the private sector.

We know that she and her husband are not wealthy people. They have a lot of debt, based on her financial disclosure form. So for someone who does want to run for president maybe sometime in the future - time to go make a lot of money -

she is staying on till the end of the year. But it made sense for her to announce this now because in case the Republicans lose big in the midterms,