Nikki Haley says she has been given "a lot of leeway" by President Donald Trump to defend his worldview at the United Nations.
In an interview with CNN posted Thursday, the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. – critical of Trump during his campaign – said the president has never told her privately not to utter something, and the pair speaks multiple times a week.
"He has given me a lot of leeway to just say what I think and interpret what he thinks," Haley said.
"I would never go rogue, because I'm very aware of who I work for."
Haley has been the hawkish counterpart in the U.N. to Trump's less interventionist foreign policy, but she told CNN the boss is fine with it.
"I'm a strong voice by nature," she said. "I'm sometimes a bull in a china shop. And, you know, he allows me to do that."
She also revealed she never asked beforehand for approval from the White House or State Department when she dramatically showed the U.N. Security Council photographs of children killed in the chemical bomb attack in Syria. She said it was her own decision at the "last minute."
"I know what he's thinking, and I just deliver that," Haley said. "And that's what he has told me to do.
"When he hired me I made it clear, I didn't want to be a wallflower or a talking head – that if he was going to hire me, and if I was going to take the job, I was going to work hard for him, I was going to stand up for the United States, I was going to try and make everyone proud and I was going to do it in my own way."
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