Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley delivered a speech on the first night of the Republican National Convention that, among other things, asserted that America is “not a racist country.” The remark quickly drew ire from those on the left — but one pundit took things a little too far.
According to the Washington Examiner, Fox News contributor Leslie Marshall has deleted a tweet that shrugged off Haley’s comments about racism in America as meaningless since they came from “a white woman.” The commentator later blamed the factually inaccurate tweet on an intern, the Examiner reported.
“This is personal”
Marshall’s tweet came in response to an article published by The Hill headlined: “Nikki Haley: US ‘is not a racist country'”
To that, Marshall snidely wrote, “Says a white woman.”
But according to the Examiner, Haley even said in her speech at the GOP convention that her parents immigrated to the U.S. from India “and settled in a small Southern town” in South Carolina, a state that later elected Haley to serve as its first female governor. Haley stepped down from that role to serve as U.N. ambassador under President Donald Trump.
“This is personal for me,” Haley said Monday, according to the Examiner. “I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. They came to America and settled in a small Southern town. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari… We faced discrimination and hardship, but my parents never gave into grievance and hate.”
Uhhh Nikki Haley is the daughter of Ajit Singh Randhawa and Raj Kaur Randhawa pic.twitter.com/13XbIrOuXB
— Peter J. Hasson (@peterjhasson) August 25, 2020
Blame it on the intern
According to the Washington Free Beacon, Marshall, who has appeared on Fox off and on since 2009, later blamed the tweet on an intern, writing: “My interns gonna get it! [sic] I took the tweet down[.] I know she’s Indian, my husband is also[.]”
Moments later, the Fox contributor doubled down.
Full disclosure it is physically impossible for me to do all of my social media that’s why I have staff and interns this was not one of my tweets and it was incorrect so I took it down
— Leslie Marshall (@LeslieMarshall) August 25, 2020
Marshall also vowed not to let interns issue tweets on her behalf any longer.
“[F]or years my staff have posted when [I]’m on vacation, out of town, etc[.] without incident,” she wrote, according to the Free Beacon. “Now it won[‘]t be happening going forward.”