Nikki Haley: Trump will ‘slap’ foes in first UN speech

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said Friday that the Trump administration will attack his enemies and embrace his friends in his first speech to the United Nations.

“I personally think he slaps the right people, he hugs the right people, and he comes out with (the) U.S. being very strong, in the end,” Haley said of the speech. 

She previewed Trump’s upcoming speech to the body of world leaders to reporters at a White House briefing Friday afternoon.

Haley wouldn’t confirm to reporters whether Trump would commit in his speech to maintaining the current levels of funding to the organization. In the past, Trump has attacked the U.N. and complained that the U.S. provides too much of the group’s funding.

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The former South Carolina governor, who is Trump’s voice at the U.N., has ratcheted up her rhetoric against North Korea in recent weeks amid continued missile tests from the country.

“We have kicked the can down the road long enough. There is no more road left,” she said earlier this month. The country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is “begging for war,” she added.

Speaking alongside Haley on Friday, national security adviser H.R. McMaster echoed that line, and added that the administration has not taken anything off the table.

“For those…who have been commenting on a lack of a military option, there is a military option,” McMaster said Friday.

Trump will give his inaugural speech to the U.N. next Tuesday, where he is expected to lay out his “America first” agenda on the stage for the first time.

He is also scheduled to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and several Latin American leaders during the week.