Please Stop With the Nikki Haley Slay Queen Bullshit

Earlier this week, Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley got in a bit of a tussle with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow over American sanctions against Russia.

I’ll let CNN’s Chris Cillizza explain with some of his patented trenchant analysis:

“She got ahead of the curve,” Kudlow told reporters gathered near Mar-a-Lago. “She’s done a great job, she’s a very effective ambassador. There might have been some momentary confusion about that.”

It felt — and sounded — like a rhetorical pat on the head. Sure, Nikki said that we were imposing sanctions on Russia. But she was sort of out of the loop and we changed our minds. She means well!

Haley wasn’t having it.

“With all due respect, I don’t get confused,” she said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon.

Ice. Cold.

Female journalists and political commentators also praised Haley for her EPIC clapback against Kudlow:

Here’s the thing: You don’t actually have to praise anyone who works in the Trump administration. That extends to Nikki Haley, who is not a feminist. The Trump administration’s policies—the ones Haley is employed to represent on the world stage—continue to put women and children in countries like Yemen, Syria, and Palestine in harm’s way. Meanwhile, Haley has defended the Trump administration’s heinous travel ban, lied about its climate change denial, and attempted to drum up a dubious argument for the U.S. to go to war with Iran.

Praising Haley for making one semi-critical comment, as she works to advance the White House’s hawkish foreign policy agenda, doesn’t make you seem like the mature feminist in the room. Feminism that props up U.S. imperialism overseas is no feminism at all.