By Barbara Demick and Tracy Wilkinson

Almost from the moment U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley took the stage at a recent women’s conference in liberal Manhattan, jeers and boos erupted. Haley flashed the crowd a smile, sitting with her hands folded in her lap. She had come straight from the U.N., where she had spoken emotionally about the poison gas attack in Syria that killed scores of civilians, the latest horror in the country’s civil war.

“America leading,” she said, “is what we are trying to do.”

MSNBC anchor Greta Van Susteren pressed Haley on the multiple investigations into whether President Trump’s current or former aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign.

Image: Nikki Haley (left), United States Permanent Representative to the UN and President of the Security Council for April, at the Council’s meeting on the situation in South Sudan. UN Photo/Rick Bajorna.