View of the Department of State in Washington, DC. (Kevin Lamarque/courtesy Reuters)
New York Times: Some U.S. Diplomats Stage Quiet Revolt Amid Tensions With Trump
WASHINGTON — As President Trump strains alliances and relationships around the world, some of the nation’s top career diplomats are breaking publicly with him, in what amounts to a quiet revolt by a cadre of public servants known for their professional discretion.
On Monday, the chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in Beijing, David H. Rank, announced his resignation after telling his staff he could not defend the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
A day earlier, the acting ambassador to Britain, Lewis A. Lukens, tweeted his support of London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, in the wake of a deadly terrorist attack there. On Sunday morning, President Trump had picked a fight with the mayor on Twitter.
Last
month, the ambassador to Qatar, Dana Shell Smith, reacted to Mr. Trump’s dismissal of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, by tweeting, “Increasingly difficult to wake up overseas to news from home, knowing I will spend today explaining our democracy and institutions.”
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WNU Editor: I have been out of the diplomatic game for almost 25 years .... but when I was in it I always found most U.S. and Western diplomats to be personally liberal/progressive on social issues, economics, and the role of government. And that was then! So am I surprised that there is a revolt among these diplomats against the Trump administration today .... not really. And I am also willing to bet that what really rankles the U.S. diplomatic corp is not the policy differences .... though that is a problem for almost all of them .... but the proposed massive cuts in their budgets. For those who may not know .... the life for a senior Western diplomat is an incredibly privileged one .... it is a culture of entitlement and being incredibly spoiled .... and if you play with their budgets and their expectations on what they can do with that money .... you can take this to the bank .... they go crazy.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: I have been out of the diplomatic game for almost 25 years .... but when I was in it I always found most U.S. and Western diplomats to be personally liberal/progressive on social issues, economics, and the role of government. And that was then! So am I surprised that there is a revolt among these diplomats against the Trump administration today .... not really. And I am also willing to bet that what really rankles the U.S. diplomatic corp is not the policy differences .... though that is a problem for almost all of them .... but the proposed massive cuts in their budgets. For those who may not know .... the life for a senior Western diplomat is an incredibly privileged one .... it is a culture of entitlement and being incredibly spoiled .... and if you play with their budgets and their expectations on what they can do with that money .... you can take this to the bank .... they go crazy.
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