https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/21/trump-team-cabinet
Trump’s ‘stunningly unqualified’ diplomatic team shapes up at breakneck speed
Trump
is hardly the first US president to introduce miscast nominees, but he
has nominated ambassadors at a rate not recalled in recent memory
Sat 21 Dec 2024 07.00 EST
They seem an unlikely, almost motley, crew of emissaries.
For
the Bahamas, there is Herschel Walker, a former NFL star whose
fledgling Senate campaign was undone by a string of personal
embarrassments but who now is named to be the next US ambassador to the
small island nation.
To
the plum diplomatic posting of Paris goes Charles Kushner, father of
Donald Trump’s son-in-law, and a man the president-elect once pardoned
for a felony conviction that the former Republican New Jersey governor
Chris Christie, an ex-federal prosecutor, called “one of the most
loathsome, disgusting crimes” he ever prosecuted.
And
to Greece, once a preserve of seasoned career diplomats, goes Kimberly
Guilfoyle, until recently the romantic partner of Trump’s eldest son,
Donald Trump Jr, and a woman known more for her rumbustious media
profile than her diplomatic acumen.
The trio
are among a flurry of ambassadorial nominees rolled out by Trump in
recent weeks as he rushes to fill his administration at breakneck speed
with envoys who will project his “America First” ideology abroad.
Their
lack of credentials has prompted one experienced foreign policy analyst
to label them a “diplomatic clown car” – and a deliberate affront to
the countries hosting them.
Since last month’s
election triumph, the president-elect has nominated ambassadors at a
rate not recalled in recent memory – including five in a single day this
week.
Some appear conspicuously unschooled in
the diplomatic arts; others have business links which experts say risk
conflicts of interest.
Unlike most countries,
which fill ambassadors’ roles from the ranks of professional diplomats,
it is customary for US presidents to reward allies and financial backers
with ambassadorial jobs – with prize postings like London and Paris
almost always going to friends of the man in the oval office.
But
Trump has broken new ground with the sheer volume of ambassadorial
nominations – and his lack of consideration of their professional
suitability.
“It’s not unusual to see a lot of
political appointee ambassadors named early in a presidency,” said
Dennis Jett, an international relations professor at Pennsylvania State
University and author of a book on the history of US ambassadors.
“But
I don’t recall any president-elect announcing bunches of
ambassadorships like this guy’s doing. They don’t usually dip down into
the ambassadorial ranks until they actually are sitting in the White
House.
“The other remarkable thing is how
stunningly unqualified everyone is. I don’t see anyone there who I
think, ‘Now there’s a highly qualified person.’”
Trump
is hardly the first US president to introduce miscast nominees. Barack
Obama’s chosen envoy to Norway, George Tsunis, withdrew his nomination
in 2014 when a Senate confirmation revealed embarrassing ignorance about the country and its political system. Tsunis was subsequently nominated as ambassador to Greece - where he currently serves - by Joe Biden.
Photograph: Christopher Dolan/AP
But few presidents have sought to do so in a manner that seems to cock a snook at the polite salons of international diplomacy.
Walker, Kushner and Guilfoyle are not the only apparently unsuited prospective envoys.
As ambassador to Nato – the military alliance which he has repeatedly disdained in public – Trump has nominated Matt Whitaker, an acting attorney general during his first presidency, whose background is in law enforcement.
For
Turkey – a key Nato ally and a country playing a strategic role in the
political fallout in Syria after the toppling of Bashar al-Assad – he
has tapped his friend, Tom Barrack, a billionaire property magnate who
chaired his 2017 inaugural committee. Barrack was acquitted in
2022 of charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for the
United Arab Emirates during the first Trump administration and lying to
the FBI.
Thomas Countryman, a former assistant
secretary of state during Barack Obama’s presidency, said the
nominations raised fears about the quality of US foreign policy in vital
areas, as well as conflicts of interest.
“An unqualified person like Herschel Walker can only do so much damage in the Bahamas,” he said.
“But
at a place like the permanent mission to Nato, having a person with
zero diplomatic experience and almost no managerial experience
negotiating some of the most difficult issues that Europe and the United
States must face together is a recipe not just for misunderstanding,
but for failure to reach the kind of consensus and compromise that
obviously requires.”
On Barrack, he added: “I
think that disentangling the private profit interests of Mr Trump and Mr
Barrack from the professional work that Barrack would need to do in
Ankara will be difficult, not least because of its non-transparency.”
Even
before taking office, Trump has caused disruption by threatening to
impose tariffs on the country’s closest neighbours, Mexico and Canada,
where his rhetoric has provoked shockwaves. The prime minister of
Canada, Justin Trudeau, has faced calls to resign after being accused of
failing to take a tough enough line, as Trump has taunted him by
calling the country “a state” and Trudeau its “governor”.
Strikingly,
Trump has chosen relatively experienced figures as ambassadors to both
countries. Pete Hoekstra, who served as ambassador to the Netherlands in
his first presidency – and a former chair of the House of
Representatives’ intelligence committee – has been tapped as ambassador
to Ottawa. For Mexico, the president-elect has nominated Ron Johnson, a
former CIA officer who was previously ambassador to El Salvador.
Indeed, not every Trump ambassadorial nominee stands out as a potential embarrassment.
George
Glass, an investment banker who was formerly ambassador to Portugal and
known for his anti-China stance, has been nominated as ambassador to
Japan.
For China, the president-elect has chosen David Perdue, a former Republican senator for Georgia.
Yet,
the overall quality is the worst ever, according to Jett – who singled
out Mike Huckabee, the nominee for ambassador to Israel as the poorest
pick. Huckabee, an avowed Christian Zionist, has denied that the West
Bank is under military occupation – a status broadly recognised by the
international community – and seems an unlikely interlocutor for peace
between the Israelis and Palestinians.
“These
outrageously bad appointments are a feature of every president,” said
Jett, a former ambassador to Mozambique and Peru. “But what’s amazing
about Trump is that it’s almost like, ‘OK, who are the worst people we
can come up with?’ We seem to be going out of our way to prove we are
not a serious country.”
Compounding the
problem, he said, is the US practice of, in effect, selling the most
prestigious ambassadorships in return for campaign contributions – a
custom that appears open to flagrant abuse given Trump’s transactional
nature.
Under a long-running but often flouted
convention – supposedly enshrined under a 1980 act of Congress – 70% of
US ambassadorial posts should go to career diplomats, with no more than
30% reserved for “political” appointees from outside the diplomatic
corps.
The percentage of “political”
ambassadors in Trump’s first administration soared to 46% – a figure
Jett predicted would be surpassed in his forthcoming term.
Laura
Kennedy, a former career ambassador who served under both Republican
and Democratic administrations, said the onus is on the Senate to
scrutinise nominees and reject those who are obviously unfit.
“What’s
really crucial and has always been part of this business, is the Senate
gives advice and consent,” she said. “My one real ask is that the
Senate take its responsibility seriously, evaluate each candidate on its
merits, and not be shy about withholding consent.”
Yet
the Senate has not formally rejected an ambassadorial candidate since
the 19th century, although senators commonly deploy informal delaying
tactics to thwart nominees - as has happened with several of Biden’s
choices.
But Joe Cirincione, a veteran
Washington foreign policy analyst, dismissed the chances of a Senate
pushback and instead condemned the Democrats – and particularly Biden –
for failing to raise the alarm.
“We have a
diplomatic clown car that’s about to be rolling up at the Capitol with
all these idiots waiting to be confirmed – but where’s the outrage?” he
said.
“Democrats have just rolled on their
belly for the alpha dog – and Biden has disappeared. He should be
issuing a warning. Every single one of these should be met with a firm
critique that this is not acceptable.
“Both
Republicans and Democrats are abandoning their traditional oversight
role. They’re consenting in advance without any rigorous review of
Trump’s nominees.”