In a Politico podcast released on Friday morning, U.S. Ambassador for the United Nations, Nikki Haley, tore into Trump gossip book author Michael Wolff’s “disgusting,” “highly offensive,” and sexist rumor that alleged without evidence that she’s been sleeping with President Trump. Haley deemed Wolff’s behavior to be a “rampant” pattern spreading “lies” “for money and power.”

Haley passionately spoke with Politico reporter Eliana Johnson about it for over four minutes, adding that this notion that women sleep their way to power is something that men and women should “stand up and say this is wrong.” As for herself personally, Haley stated that such rumors “only makes me fight” and “work harder.”

Just past the 31-minute mark, Johnson broached the topic of Wolff’s “pretty salacious allusion” during the January 19 edition of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher “there was something I was absolutely sure of, but it was so incendiary that I didn't have the ultimate proof,” which was that Trump was having an affair.

Johnson jabbed Wolff for not having “the cajones to make it in his book or outright,” so he instead told Maher that people should “read between the lines...toward the end of the book.” The only relevant passage was a Wolff claim that Haley and Trump “had been spending a notable amount of private time” together “on Air Force One.”

Haley declared the rumor “absolutely not true,” “highly offensive,” and “disgusting.”

“If you look at what Mike — and I have said this before, it amazes me what people will do and the lies they will say for money and power and, in politics, it’s rampant....I have literally been on Air Force One once and there were several people in the room when I was there,” she added.

She tore into the notion that Wolff has let this rumor out is “a problem” that “goes to a bigger issue...I’ve noticed that if you speak your mind and you’re strong about it and you say what you believe, there is a small percentage of people that resent that and the way they deal with it is to try and throw arrows, lies or not to diminish you.”

Johnson expanded more broadly to the “hurtful and damaging” stereotype that a “successful woman...has to sleep her way to the top.”

When asked about how she responds to ongoing case of sexism, Haley pointed out that everyone (including the media) should “stand up and say this is wrong” because she’s seen this at all levels of government from the South Carolina legislature to the United Nations.

Put simply, Haley explained that people come to resent strong women and thus must do everything to tear them down:

I see them do it to other women and the thing is when women work, they prioritize, they focus, and they believe, if you’re going to do something, do it right and others see that as either too ambitious or stepping out of line and the truth is we need to continue to do our job and if they consider it stepping out of line, fine[.]

“Any time this has happened, it only makes me fight harder. It only makes me work harder and I do it for the sake of other women that are behind me because they should never think that they have to put their head down and cower out of fear that someone’s going to do something to you,” she concluded.

Here’s the relevant transcript from Politico Podcast’s Women Who Rule released on January 26: