OPINION:
Outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley showed her humorous side while delivering a speech at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City — and honestly, who knew?
Who knew her talents for subduing anti-American sentiment at the United Nations, and protecting Israeli interests on the global scale, could morph so easily into one-liners like this: “I get it. You wanted an Indian woman [to come speak], but Elizabeth Warren failed her DNA test.”
Zing.
That was the warm-up.
CNN compiled a list of her funniest moments.
“When the president found out that I was Indian-American,” she said, “he asked if I was from the same tribe as Elizabeth Warren.”
Zing-zing.
Another: “Jeff Flake was going to be here,” Haley said, “but he wanted to give the FBI a week to look into it.”
Zing-zing-zing.
Yet another: “With all of our differences,” she went on, “there is still one thing that unites all 193 countries [of the United Nations]. At one point, every single one of them was paying Paul Manafort.”
And here’s one with a message — listen up, millennials mulling socialism as the American way to go.
“I am still someone who gets very excited about Halloween,” Haley said, “but in this toxic environment, even this causes political arguments. Bernie Sanders wants free candy for everyone. Mitch McConnell calls it a typical Democrat giveaway program. The president says it’s going to be the best Halloween ever — nothing like it ever before, huge.”
Free is not free; somebody’s paying, right?
Yet one more — a little too close to truth for comfort. File this one under Half-Laugh: “I saw when recently [Barack Obama] said that we’re not supposed to use the FBI or the Justice Department to punish political enemies,” Haley began. “[James] Comey, [Andrew] McCabe and [Peter] Strzok said, ’Now you tell us.’ Turns out what President Obama meant to say, ’That’s what we use the IRS for.’ “
And finally one, perhaps the best Haley line of the evening — a touchdown in terms of dinging Democrats.
“The president,” Haley said, “got really mad about [Bob] Woodward’s book, really mad. The book compared him to a fifth-grader. A lot of Democrats seized on that — until they realized they got beat by a fifth-grader.”
LOL.
Haley, U.N. queen of tough-talk, now New York queen of the one-liners, is leaving her White House role at the end of this year — and my, how she will be missed.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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