Donald Trump is not the president and “envoy ambassadors” are not a real thing

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If history has taught us anything, it is that the connection of “Donald Trump” and “foreign policy” is almost always the source of some serious fuckery. And as Karl Marx famously said: History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as comedy.

This is why I can’t help but appreciate the fierce humor inherent in the former president’s claim this week that he sent an “ambassador” to visit the border between conflicting antagonists Serbia and Kosovo on his behalf. Here, in full, is the press release Trump sent out on Thursday, with a related section I highlighted:

The great people of Serbia and Kosovo have overcome enormous obstacles in their pursuit of economic normalization. The agreements made by my administration are historic and should not be abandoned, many lives are at stake. The region is very important and people have waited so long for this work to be put aside. Today, my Envoy Ambassador Ric Grenell visited the Kosovo-Serbia border to highlight this important agreement. As we proved in the Middle East in the Abraham Accords, peace and economic normalization are possible, but it requires concerted effort and unwavering leadership. Peace is possible, don’t give up – long -term prosperity for those two countries is at stake!

“Her huh?” your question? “A whatvoy whobassador?” This is a good question. Because Trump wants the general public to interpret the pair of wonderfully sounding nouns as a very serious, very authoritative position, the truth is it’s not a real thing. To all. It’s just a guy on a work trip, with no actual power or action to talk about. In fact, it is directly illegal under the Logan Act for a private citizen to run a shadow foreign policy without, you know, actually representing the current administration.

That’s almost beside the point, though, because like most Trump things, the most important thing is the style, not the outfit. Who cares if his fancy titled-but-actually-powerless “ambassador” has no real authority? That empty suit in question coincides with longtime MAGA-addled Trump sycophant Ric Grenell, who like many in the Trump administration has risen beyond his actual skill set, serving others another time as either ambassador to Germany, and acting director. of national intelligence, making the statement even more ridiculous. (Grenell also had previously worked for a corrupt Moldovan politician – a fact he only somewhat tolerated, after his unnamed payments for the job were made public.)

But what Trump cares about more than anything is showing the image of a man with his finger on the wrist of global politics – an image, he hopes, of his true believers will be proof that he is not just a miserable old man. man squirming in his big. empty mansion.

Reactions to Trump’s inadvertent aggression, as then, in the delicate dance of geopolitics are largely divided between outright sarcasm from some people serving under the actual current president, Joe Biden, and creeping acquaintances. creeps from professional diplomats worried about the impact of a real rogue player running around pretending to have some sort of authority that could be caused. “The reason why diplomatic and intelligence communication uses such particular and analyzed language is not fun for its own reasons, it is to prevent actors from reading between the lines in official statements,” he said. of a NATO intelligence officer assigned to Brussels to Vice. “So now Grenell is walking around telling small Balkan politicians not to listen to Biden because Trump will return to power, and the danger is that some of them might believe him.”

“The problem of course is that Grenell is a persuasive idiot, and this is probably illegal under U.S. law,” another NATO diplomat said at the site. Unlike the role Grenell did, that’s true.

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