Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley stopped by Meet The Press to speak with Chuck Todd about the Biden Administration’s standing on the world stage —particularly how it relates to Russia and China. Why are we still buying Russian oil? Why did Biden try to back channel with China? Would this have happened under Trump? Haley and Todd dig in. Excerpts below, watch the clip above.
“[Putin] is going to drag this out as long as he can…He is an evil tyrant that we see is not going to stop until he can control the Soviet Empire,” Haley said. “What we have learned in the lesson in all of this is, when tyrants speak, we should listen. He said he would take Ukraine, he is. China said they would take Hong Kong, they did. He said he would take Poland and the Baltics, we should listen to that. Iran said they would destroy Israel. Every time a tyrant speaks, we need to remember they told us, we need to listen.”
Todd raised the question of whether or not NATO should enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine; Haley’s not a supporter of that idea.
“No, I’m not in favor of a no fly zone right now. What I am in favor of is the Biden Administration stepping up and doing the things that will matter,” Haley said. “We know the one thing that punches Putin in the gut is to hit his energy sector. There is no reason we should be taking money from an enemy. We should go ahead and sanction all those energy companies right now.”
“We should be making sure we’re moving forward on giving them the missiles they need. They have said they don’t have what they need. They need javelins, they need stingers, they need anti-tank tools to do this. We’re late to the game, we’re still late to the game. It’s not too late now, but we’ve got to get on the ball,” Haley added.
When Todd pushed Haley on Trump, she backed the former President’s actions.
“I was personally there in the United Nations when [Trump] got out of the Iran deal, when he expelled diplomats, when he refused Nord Stream 2 pipeline. He did stronger things against Russia than Republican or Democratic presidents before him … Putin knew not to mess with the United States. Putin needs to know that again. We need to start standing up. Why are we even ho-humming around the fact that we’re still taking Russian oil? Why are we doing that? Why would we take money from evil dictators? You never sleep with the devil because then the devil owns you. The Europeans are finding that out right now. We need to be smarter than that.”
Watch the clip above.