Haley’s most preposterous complaint is that Biden shouldn’t have asked China to help dissuade Putin from attacking Ukraine. “I was mortified that Biden went so far as asking China for help with Russia,” she sputtered on Meet the Press. “You never ask an enemy for help with another enemy.”

That’s a shockingly illiterate statement. It contradicts the entire history of crisis diplomacy, most notably the U.S./U.K.-Soviet alliance against Hitler. (As Winston Churchill put it: “If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”) And it wasn’t a slip: Haley has repeated it in other interviews since the war in Ukraine began. “You never go ask an enemy for help with another enemy,” she told Kilmeade on March 1. In another Fox News interview, she asked indignantly: “When you’re going to one enemy to get help with another enemy, do you know how weak that looks?”

Haley’s professed outrage about the overture to Beijing is completely fake. As she has acknowledged in moments of candor, the Chinese government had leverage over Russia’s decision and doesn’t like the way Russia has conducted the war. So she knows the bid for China’s assistance was the right move. Furthermore, she continues to boast that “when I was at the U.N., we passed three sets of massive sanctions against North Korea.” Haley obtained those sanctions by collaborating with Chinese and Russian diplomats—yet she now calls Biden’s use of the same tactic “naïve,” “weak,” and “humiliating.” Last week, she told Fox News, “The idea that Biden would go ask China for help with Russia sickens me to my core.” A politician who lies to your face as she talks about her “core” is showing you she has no core.

She also has no courage. It’s easy for American politicians to talk trash about Putin. What’s hard is to stand up for democracy and the rule of law when those principles are threatened by a man who can derail your career.