Kate Bachelder Odell

Many Americans have heard the name Fat Leonard. That’s the sobriquet of Leonard Francis, an obese Malaysian defense contractor who, in the 2000s, fleeced the U.S. Navy and compromised some of its Pacific officers, plying them with parties, prostitutes and expensive gifts. The scandal doesn’t lack color. Fat Leonard: How One Man Bribed, Bilked, and Seduced the U.S. Navy Simon & Schuster 480 pages We may earn a commission when you buy products through the links on our site.

By Kate Bachelder Odell New York Nikki Haley has a theory about Donald Trump. When he “senses one ounce of weakness, he topples you,” she says. If he runs into “any amount of strength, he walks away from you.” Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations is describing how she plans to confront—and defeat—her old boss in the Republican presidential primary. “I’m not movable when it comes to what I believe, and I call you out like it is.

Mr. Trump is 50 points ahead of his nearest competitor in some GOP national primary polls. But most voters are only now meeting Ms. Haley, 51, a former South Carolina governor and daughter of Indian immigrants. On the campaign trail, she says on a visit to the Journal’s editorial board, people “whisper, ‘I voted with him twice, but we got to win in November.’ ” She is careful to give her former boss his due: “I think President Trump was the right president at the right time,” she says.