Former Fox News host and State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert withdrew Saturday from consideration as UN ambassador in the wake of information that she had employed an immigrant nanny who wasn’t legally allowed to work in the U.S., sources told Bloomberg.
Nauert’s statement on her decision concerning the UN post made no mention of the nanny issue. She reportedly employed the nanny at some period in the past. But such a situation would have been particularly troublesome for President Donald Trump after he just declared a national emergency over immigration across the southern border on Friday.
The nanny news would have emerged after the disturbing firings last month of a dozen undocumented immigrants who had worked for years at the Trump National Golf Club in New York’s Westchester County.
“I am grateful to President Trump and Secretary [Mike] Pompeo for the trust they placed in me for considering me for the position of US Ambassador to the United Nation,” Nauert said in a statement Saturday issued by the State Department. “However, the past two months have been grueling for my family and therefore it is in the best interest of my family that I withdraw my name from consideration.”
Nauert was a controversial pick for the UN job because of her inexperience and troubling comments about Muslims. She mocked Muslims in a 2016 tweet that linked to a New York Times story about Muslims’ concerns over then-presidential candidate Trump. “They should meet ISIS,” she wrote sarcastically. She was also linked to blogger Robert Spencer, a prominent anti-Muslim activist who is banned from entering the UK.
She was lashed for a “stunningly tone deaf” Instagram photo she shared late last year showing her smiling in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh shortly after Pompeo arrived there to discuss the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The journalist was murdered on the orders of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the CIA later determined.
Trump said in December that he planned to nominate Nauert to replace Nikki Haley as UN ambassador. But the Trump administration’s failure to submit her name for Senate confirmation after Haley resigned raised suspicions that her nomination was in trouble.
The State Department said Trump will make an announcement soon about a new nominee.
The president was already discussing a possible replacement for Nauert with advisers Saturday evening, a source told Bloomberg.
