Trump Taps Former Fox News Ideologue As UN Ambassador

The totally unqualified Heather Nauert.

As if proof of the premise of the previous post - i.e., that today's GOP is the party of the witless - were needed, Der Trumpenführer has selected someone utterly unqualified to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.  Rather than select someone with knowledge and experience, Trump picked a former Fox News ideologue who has a total of 16 months in government and no foreign policy experience.  It's reminiscent of Hitler's placement of  the unqualified in positions as long as they were loyal to him and would parrot his sick agenda. Bloomberg looks at this idiotic choice that is all too predictable given the Trump/Pence regimes recruitment of stooges to date.  Here are article highlights:

Donald Trump has settled on State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to replace departing United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Nauert, 48, is an unusual choice for the UN role given that she had little experience in government or foreign policy before joining the administration in April 2017 after several years as an anchor and correspondent for Fox News, including on the “Fox and Friends” show watched by Trump. Haley also lacked foreign policy experience when she took the UN posting, but she had twice been elected governor of South Carolina.

Nevertheless, Nauert’s candidacy had the strong support of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, who came to trust her as a reliable voice and advocate for Trump’s agenda. It was a stark turnaround from the era of Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who shut her out from his inner circle. She had threatened to quit several times under Tillerson but, thanks partly to her alliance with Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband Jared Kushner, she ended up outlasting her former boss.

“Nauert is a very good public operator, and should do a professional job presenting U.S. policy at the UN,” Richard Gowan, a senior fellow at the United Nations University’s Center for Policy Research, said in an email. “It is less clear that she has the experience to hammer out hard deals with China and Russia over problems like Iran and North Korea.”

Aides believe Nauert’s key assets include strong communications skills and a fluency with the Trump White House, particularly in understanding the thinking of the president and secretary of state.

Nauert won’t face an easy confirmation battle given her lack of experience and the likelihood that she’ll be asked to answer for the Trump administration’s scorn for international bodies, including the UN. In a speech in Brussels this week, Pompeo made his doubts about the organization clear, asking, “Does it continue to serve its mission faithfully?”

“In the absence of any actual diplomatic experience I suppose it’s reassuring to UN supporters that she will arrive with no particular personal agenda,” said Loren DeJonge Schulman, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. But in a reference to Nauert’s background as a spokeswoman, she added, “It’s not a role for merely reading talking points.”