Part o worship with politics and prose bookstore and the third in the George WashingtonUniversity President ial distinguished events series. We launched the series last semester to give our students the opportunity to hear from renowned leaders of the individuals that bring illuminating dialogue, insight and inspiration to the campus. In the heart of the nations capital, the university is fortunate to be surrounded by the many governmental nonprofit and International Agencies and organizations that make the decisions that affect each of us every day. Our location here allows us to be part of those decisions. It allows our students access to the uniquely dc experiential learning opportunities and it allows our faculty to provide rigorous and highquality scholarship and problem solving and iproblemsolvingand it alloo serve as a hub for timely discussions that are important and relevant to all of us. Tonight, we are pleased to host former United States ambassador to the United Nations, nikki haley in a discussion about her new book, with all due respect defending america with grit and grace, which offers a firsthand perspective on the national and International Matters as well as behind the scenes account of her tenure in the trump administration. Ambassador haley will be joined tonight by the moderator and United States senator who in 2014 was elected as the first woman to serve in federal elected office from the state of iowa. Please enjoy this evenings discussion in thank you for being here. [applause] South Carolina governor nikki haley was sworn in she became the first female governor. His been mac i promise and im determined to get them. She says it i that is the sie largest Economic Investment in the state for the 200 year history. Manufacturing right here in charleston county. Its a great day in South Carolina. 560 million invested, 1700 jobs right here in chester county. The best part of what has happened the past couple of years is watching all of these jobs not just go into the cities but into rural South Carolina because if you can give a person a job, you take care of a family and we have had a lot of families the past couple of years. To be the ambassador to the United Nations and she has accepted. Considered a rising star in the Republican Party commission would be the first appointed to trumps cabinet. The new ambassador to the United Nations is living proof of the promise of america. For anyone that says you cant get anything done at the un, they need to know there is a new sheriff in town. There is a new u. S. Un. Youll see a way to beat the change in the way we do business. For those who dont have our back we are taking names. A protector for human rights abusers and political bias if for any reason north korea attacks the United States or our allies, the u. S. Will respond, period. Shes so consistent. You know you are not going to move her. The americans said we want our embassy in the capital and that is jerusalem. America will put our embassy in jerusalem. That is what the American People want us to do and its the right thing to do. No vote in the United Nations will make any difference on this. What we witnessed here today at the Security Council is an insult. It will not be forgotten. Standing her ground by un ambassador making it clear. She knows what American Foreign policy looks like. Some people see theres too much political splatter. I dont think its swagger. I think its passion. Im passionate about defending the United States. She says the world is respecting the United States again. Music i didnt know that they would be elected into the legislature or the governor and i certainly never thought i would be the un ambassador. Even though i am a citizen i know i am too young to stop fighting. [cheering] good evening. Welcome, everyone, welcome to gw university. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. We are going to have a wonderful discussion with Ambassador Nikki Haley. Can we say thank you to her one more time, please . [applause] [cheering] thank you so much. Thank you for being here. We are going to have a lovely discussion this evening with Ambassador Haley and we will start with about 45 minutes of questions and those are questions i will be asking you come ambassador, and then we will move on to about 15 minutes of questions from the audience. So with that come ambassador, would you like to start with some remarks . Guest first off and its great to be at gw. I have to tell you. [cheering] thank you for hosting us tonight and allowinthistonight and alloe here. You are a rockstar and we are excited to watch everything that you do. But i was actually here on campus because our son is looking to come to gw next fall so we will see if that happens. There is a bit of an application process we have to go to first. Having said that, thank you for having us. But seriously, i know im here, but how cool is it to have the first female combat veteran in the senate here with us, johnny ernst [applause] [cheering] you were so nice to do this and we are just going to have a fun conversation and hang out for a bit. When the folks from the ambassadors office had called and my staff reached out to me and said what you like to and the minute they said your name i was like yes [laughter] i didnt even know what it was but i was excited to do it. With that, we are going to go ahead and get started and i am going to take us back a little bit in history because a lot of folks maybe dont know about your background or how you grew up. We will start there because they really thinireally think it sete for the wonderful years to come. You describe your american story and how you didnt quite fit in as a girl growing up in the south. What was that experience like for you growing up as the daughter we all know of indian immigrants. You are living in rural South Carolina. Guest we lived in a small town. We were the only indian family in that town. We were not white enough to be white, we were not black enough to be black. My father wore a turban and still does to this day. They didnt know who we were, what we wear or why we were there. And i remember being on the playground and coming home after being teased. My mom would say your job isnt to show people how youre different, its to show people how you are similar. And its amazing how that lesson i learned on the playground played out in my life in the corporate world as a legislator, as governor, and as ambassador because when you are faced with a challenge, if you first talk about what you agree on first, people will let their guard down and then you are more likely to get to a solution by pushing through that. Little did i know that would turn out to be a great lesson along the way. Host and your mother is wise beyond her years. Guest yes, she tells me that every day. [laughter] of course she does. Shes a great mom. So, some folks may not realize that before you were Ambassador Nikki Haley and before you were governor nikki haley, you actually served in the buddhist nature is that correct . I did. So, whats interesting my mom started a business from scratch in a few years into her business, her accountant was going to leave and she needed to train someone. A few days before she left she said im getting concerned we dont have someone to train. I happened to be walking by and my mom grabbed my arm and said train her, she can do it. They said that shes 13. [laughter] and she said train her, she will do it. So at 13 i was balancing the bank account, writing the checks, making sure we were giving bank deposits, the whole bit. It wasnt until i go t got to ce i realized that wasnt normal. Now i totally realize there was child labor. [laughter] us through that process i developed a love number is and the fact that number still a story and every problem can be fixed by moving the numbers around so i ended up graduating with a degree in accounting from princeton university, go tigers and then i got tired of working for the guys down the hall, came to come to the family business. One day i was sitting there complaining again and my mom was there. I was complaining about how hard it is to make a dollar and how easy it is for the government to take it. Wants to quit complaining about it and do something about it. I did not know you were not supposed to run against a 30 year incumbent in the primary. I truly didnt. Ignorance is bliss. So once i realized tha id gottn myself into, the only option was to win. So, my husband drove, i was in the passenger seat and we started knocking on doors. He was the longestserving legislator at that time in the state of South Carolina. I would knock on doors and not say anything disparaging about him. I would say we appreciate what hes done all these years, but i think i can do something different. I always talked about me, i didnt talk about him and i was fortunate enough to get elected. Fast forward, im in the legislature a few years and in South Carolina whenever they were passing legislation, it was done by a voice vote. All in favor, i mac the ayes habit. When david was a piece of legislation that went across the desk that gave legislators pay raises. All in favor, all opposed on assignment from the ayes have it but to this day you can find one legislator that says they voted themselves a pay raise. I got really upset and went to the speaker of the house and said this is why people dont trust us. The next day i filed a bill that said anything important enough to be debated on the floor of the house or the senate is important enough to have a vote on the record. The speaker called me in and said thsent the bill away, we dt need to have it. We will decide what the public needs to see and what they dont. I remember going home that night and talking to my husband and saying if i cant even get legislative votes on the record, what am i doing here and he said it and go fight. So i went across the state of South Carolina and said did you know of all of the bill is passed on the house only 8 were on the record . Did you know of all the bills passed in the senate only 1 was on the record. So if you didnt know how your house member voted, 92 of the time to come if you didnt know how your senator voted 99 of the time, how did you know who to vote for when you go to the polls and the people of South Carolina were shocked. To put it in perspective, it is the chairman of the freshman class and my second year i was majority whip, 30 year put on a powerful Business Committee to my fourth year as the subcommittee chair of thinking. A year i wouldnt put the bill away they stripped me of everything. I could go to the well and no one would hear it i could get support, no one would hear it. So i ran for governor. [applause] and one ohispanic and one oft bills we signed into law is now in South Carolina. Any piece of legislation debated on the floor of the house or the senate has to have a vote on the record and we took it a step further they have to show their vote on the record on every section of the budget as well. Very inspiring. I love the transparency. So, this next question, this is a hard one. You have had an inspirational life and i am going to go back to probably some very hard dark days that you had as governor of the beautiful state of South Carolina many of you will know what im referencing that out of despair can come desperation and show leadership. So this next question, ambassador, you talk about the tragic killing of nine innocent at the Episcopal Church in 2015. During your time as governor which led to the decision to bring the Confederate Flag down from the ground of the state capital, can you tell us a little adult that time and how the incident affected the people in the state of South Carolina and then as well if you can, what did you do to bring the citizens together and reunite everyone . Guest my heart goes out to the community that had the shooting today. When Something Like that happens, its not just the people in the room that are affected from its the entire community. On that night we had people do what they do every wednesday night, they went to bible study. But on this night, someone else showed up. He didnt look like them or sound like them and he didnt act like them. They didnt call the cops, they didnt throw him out. Instead, they pulled up a chair and prayed with him for an hour. When they bowed their heads in the last prayer, he began to shoot. These were people like ethel that lost her daughter two years prior to Breast Cancer and she had a broken heart. She would go around the mother in annual church cleaning the church and she would sing one day at a time, sweet jesus, thats all i ask of you, give me the strength to do every day what i have to do. Our youngest victim Just Graduated College and was so excited about his life but on that night he stood in front of his 87 year old great aun 87yee and looked at the counter and said you dont have to do this. We mean no harm to you. Or it was people like cynthia whose life motto was simply to be kinder than necessary. Thats who these people were. They were not famous. A lot of people didnt know them, but they loved their families, they left their church, and they loved their community. And when that happened, it brought South Carolina to our knees. It was the first time he had a shooting in a religious place. And i remember all i wanted to do was to protect the state because the National Media came in strong. They wanted to define it, talk about it, immediately debate racism, they wanted to debate gun control, the death penalty, i need you name it, they were talking about it. I remember strongarming them back saying we are not going to do this. We are going to give the time to the families and go to the funeral. There will be a time and place we will have those discussions, but it is not now. The next day the killer comes out with a manifesto and hes holding up the Confederate Flag. The Confederate Flag flew in front of the statehouse of South Carolina it used to be on top of the dome and then they compromised in 2000 it came in front of the statehouse. And when he did that, we have a lot of people in South Carolina dihave a Great Respect for the Confederate Flag not out of reasons of hate out of the fact that it service and their ancestors and sacrifice. That was the way they look at it and then you had obviously the small minority that saw it for what it was. But he hijacked what that was. Take it a step further, go another day or two days after that and it was the first time that he was going to be in the courthouse and facing the judge. The families showed up, im prompted, unplanned, and one by one stood in front of the killer and forgave him. That forgiveness was so overwhelming that we didnt have protests, we had officials. We didnt have vitamins, we had was. And when we went through a tough few the where we have to debate where that Confederate Flag needed to go into the good people of South Carolina stepped up and it was moved to the museum and the people of South Carolina showed the entire world what it means to get through a tragedy. [applause] out of despair there comes inspiration. I just want to thank the people of South Carolina. With your leadership, ambassador, for showing us how we get through those difficult times by sharing love with one another, and not a trade and not violence, but love and forgiveness. So, thank you for that. We are going to move ahead a little bit and talk about the next step from being governor to the great state of South Carolina, and i would like you to tell the audience a little bit about when you were offered the position to be the un ambassador and was it a difficult decision for you to make and what we want to know is what were those conversations like with President Donald Trump when he was asking you to take on this momentous position sex guest vvictor to the its interesting i knew the president a few years prior. After i won the primary for governor the first time, i received an envelope with a great gold trim and it had a check and a note that says youre a winner. [laughter] i talked to him then and we had stayed in contact over the years and then we had a republican primary. We had 16 people on the stage, a lot of talent on the stage. I put my backing on another candidate, and it was around that time he sent out saying nikki haley is an embarrassment to South Carolina, in which i responded plus your heart. [laughter] but we did have a respect for each other. I knew if you kicked him he was going to offer and if you push me im going to push back. Push forward, he won the primary and i supported him in the general. I get a call from his new chief of staff brings previous and he says i need you to come to new york and i said for wh