Haley, with no prior national security experience and once a vociferous Trump critic, has nevertheless emerged as an outspoken foreign policy figure defending Trump's worldview. And she's doing so from her perch as the US Ambassador to the United Nations, a narrow gig that has not always been at the vanguard of an administration's broader priorities.

“He has given me a lot of leeway to just say what I think and interpret what he thinks,” Haley said of the president in an interview with CNN's Jamie Gangel. “I would never go rogue, because I'm very aware of who I work for.”

But Haley has used the UN to offer a hawkish veneer for Trump's less interventionist foreign policy. She has blasted Russia in the wake of the domestic attack in Syria by Bashar al-Assad, which motivated a US airstrike by Trump earlier this month.

“I'm a strong voice by nature. I'm sometimes a bull in a china shop,” she said. “And, you know, he allows me to do that.”