Donald Trump is nominating Kelly Knight Craft to be the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations. Knight is currently the US ambassador to Canada.

The president announced his choice in a pair of tweets on Friday evening, saying: “Kelly has done an outstanding job representing our Nation and I have no doubt that, under her leadership, our Country will be represented at the highest level. Congratulations to Kelly and her entire family!”

The announcement comes a week after Trump’s first choice to replace Nikki Haley at the UN, the former Fox News host and state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, withdrew her candidacy.

Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, announced her resignation last October and stepped down at the end of the year.

Knight Craft, who has donated to the Republican party, is married to Joseph Kraft, a billionaire coal magnate from Kentucky. It was reported on Thursday that Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senator and Republican majority leader, had recommended her for the UN job.

In 2017, as ambassador to Canada, Knight Craft made headlines about a key UN concern when she was asked in a television interview: “Do you believe in climate change?”

She answered: “I believe there are scientists on both sides that are accurate.”

Asked if she believed “there is science that proves that man is not causing climate change”, she said: “Well, I think that both sides have, you know, their own results from their studies, and I appreciate and respect both sides of the science.”

In June 2017, Trump, who has himself cast doubt on accepted climate science, withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord, a global pact designed to combat the effects of climate change.