UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, one of the Trump administration’s brightest stars, has been forced to deny an ugly, sexist rumor fueled by sleazeball Michael Wolff.
On Bill Maher’s HBO program, Wolff — author of a best-selling, fact-challenged book on the first Trump year — recently claimed he’d omitted an “incendiary” incident because he lacked “ultimate proof.”
But he invited people to “read between the lines” of a paragraph near the book’s end; when you do, “you’re going to say ‘Bingo!’ ”
The political Twittersphere then went viral over a sentence claiming Haley “had been spending a notable amount of private time” with Trump on Air Force One. Bingo, they concluded: The president and his UN envoy are having an affair.
“Highly offensive,” “disgusting” and “absolutely not true,” replied Haley, adding that she’s only been on Air Force One once — with plenty of witnesses.
This is par for the course: Journalists across the spectrum have slammed Wolff’s reporting as slipshod. His professed rule: “If it rings true, it is true.”
But people tend to believe sensational tidbits that reinforce their worldview. And Wolff’s gossip gives other outlets an excuse to repeat unverified and even phony stories with no need to even try confirming them.
And so, at the height of #MeToo, Haley gets slimed by the age-old sexist suggestion that she’s sleeping her way to the top.
“I see it now, I see them do it to other women,” she said this week.
Test of feminist principle: Who’ll stand up to defend Haley and denounce this outrage?