Two Russian pranksters allegedly tricked Nikki Haley into getting the United States United Nations Ambassador to comment on “Bimono,” a small island in the South China Sea…that doesn’t exist, The Hill reports. If they were truly speaking to Haley, which isn’t clear at this point, that’s obviously massively embarrassing for her and the U.S., which honestly can’t handle much more international humiliation.
In the over twenty-minute phone call, posted to YouTube, Alexei Stolyarov and Vladimir Kuznetsov, who go by Vovan and Lexus, posed as Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. They discussed Polish-Russia relations for the majority of the prank call, but then bated her into talking about the fictional island of Binomo.
“One more matter is the island Binomo. It’s not far from Vietnam in the South China Sea…You Know Binomo?” the man said and Haley replied “yes, yes.”
They went on to create a nice little story about how Binomo had declared independence: “They had elections and we suppose Russians had its intervention,” the man on the phone said. “Yes, of course they did, absolutely,” the person who is allegedly Haley replied.
She continued with her confident knowledge, assuring the fake Prime Minister, “We’ve been watching that very closely, and I think we will continue to watch that as we deal with the issues that keep coming up about the South China Sea.”
The fake Morawiecki obviously wants to know what the United States plans to do about Binomo, because that’s important stuff.
“Let me find out exactly what our stance is on that, and what if anything the U.S. is doing or thinks should be done, and I will report back to you on that as well,“ Haley said. She does evade giving any clear opinion on the matter, which makes sense because it’s awfully hard to take a hard stance on an international political issue that doesn’t exist.
John Degory, a spokesman for Haley, told The Post and Courier they “have nothing to share on that at this time.” Hopefully, by some grace of God, the whole thing was fake and America can be spared from more international criticism. But based on this past year’s luck, it’s probably real. *sigh*