Haley 'embraced' Trump affair rumor by denying it, 'Fire and Fury' author says

The author of a controversial book about Donald Trump’s presidency is denying he suggested the Republican is having an affair with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.

Instead, “Fire and Fury” author Michael Wolff said in a recent interview that Haley “seems to have embraced” the accusation by denying it.

“I would say she seems to have embraced it,” Wolff told the Skimm. “All she does is hammer on this fact. ... I am not accusing her of anything. (But) she hasn’t tried to avoid this, let’s say.”

Wolff also claimed “some other reporter” accused Haley of having an affair with Trump, not him.

In his inside account of the Trump White House, Wolff wrote Haley worked to get into Trump’s inner circle after the president named the former S.C. governor as his ambassador to the United Nations. Wolff wrote Haley had received a “notable amount of private time” with Trump aboard Air Force 1, the presidential jet.

Wolff later told HBO’s Bill Maher that he thinks Trump is having an affair with an unidentified person, but he didn’t have enough evidence to say so outright in the book.

“Now that I’ve told you, when you hit that paragraph, you’ll say, ‘Bingo,’ ” Wolff told Maher.

Wolff also wrote Trump aides feared Haley was positioning herself as a potential replacement for Trump atop the Republican ticket in 2020, with one anonymous source calling her “ambitious as Lucifer.”

Haley addressed the rumor head on in Politico’s “Women Rule” podcast on Friday, calling the gossip “highly offensive” and “disgusting.” The allegation is “absolutely not true,” she said.

“I have literally been on Air Force 1 once and there were several people in the room when I was there,” Haley said. “He 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 alluded to allegations from her 2010 campaign for governor when other men came forward to claim they had had affairs with the Republican state representative from Lexington. Haley dismissed those claims as resentment borne of jealousy.

“Any time this has happened, it only makes me fight harder, it only makes me work harder,” she said. “I do it for the sake of other women that are behind me.”

Likewise, Trump has dismissed “Fire and Fury” as “full of lies.” Others have pointed out factual inaccuracies in the book.

This story was originally published January 31, 2018 at 2:54 PM with the headline "Haley 'embraced' Trump affair rumor by denying it, 'Fire and Fury' author says."