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.
But few presidents have sought to do so in a manner that seems to c$%k 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”
