U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley at the UN this week. (Twitter/Nikki Haley/U.S. Govt)

Nikki Haley claims that the president is “truthful,” and in doing so she proves that she isn’t:

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley vigorously defended the president Tuesday, telling NBC’s “Today” show that the president is a truthful person, and was truthful “in every instance” she interacted with him.

Haley has ambitions for higher office, and she has calculated that aligning herself closely with Trump is the best bet for having a political career in the GOP in the future. That is the only explanation I can think of for why she would tell such a discrediting lie. Trump is anything but truthful. Many presidents before Trump have told lies to the public, but the president is probably the most constant and casual liar of the bunch. He lies about things great and small, and if he thought there was an advantage for him he would probably tell us that the sun rises in the west and attack the rest of us for believing our “fake eyes.”

There is a cottage industry of reporters who have exhaustively documented the number of times that the president has made false and misleading claims. Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star has a running series of catching Trump in obvious lies. The record shows that he repeatedly tries to tell us that black is white or vice versa depending on what suits his immediate interests. The president is as mendacious as can be, and more than that he tries to deceive his supporters into thinking that accurate reporting about him is “fake” if it reflects poorly on him and that flattering fiction is reality.

When she was ambassador to the U.N., Haley was often veracity-challenged herself. Like other administration officials, she made many false claims about Iran and its nuclear program. As Harry Kazianis put it last year, she served as Trump’s “Baghdad Bob” when it came to echoing administration propaganda. Despite all that, she left the administration with her reputation largely intact. Now she seems content to throw it away for the sake of some shameless pandering to the president’s supporters.

Haley has always been something of an opportunist as most politicians are, but this latest statement shows that there is nothing that she won’t say if she thinks it will help her political career. Even if this abasement on her part gets her a brief boost in her political fortunes among Republicans, the rest of the country will know that she can’t be trusted. The pitiful thing is that she is probably selling her integrity for nothing.