Tag: Heather Nauert

Donald Trump is nominating Kelly Knight Craft to be the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations. Knight is currently the US ambassador to Canada. The president announced his choice in a pair of tweets on Friday evening, saying: “Kelly has done an outstanding job representing our Nation and I have no doubt that, under her leadership, our Country will be represented at the highest level. Congratulations to Kelly and her entire family!” The announcement comes a week after Trump’s first choice to replace Nikki Haley at the UN, the former Fox News host and state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, withdrew her candidacy. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, announced her resignation last October and stepped down at the end of the year. Trump's UN ambassador pick, Heather Nauert, withdraws from consideration Read more Knight Craft, who has donated to the Republican party, is married to Joseph Kraft, a billionaire coal magnate from Kentucky. It was reported on Thursday that Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky senator and Republican majority leader, had recommended her for the UN job. In 2017, as ambassador to Canada, Knight Craft made headlines about a key UN concern when she was asked in a television interview: “Do you believe in climate change?” She answered: “I believe there are scientists on both sides that are accurate.” Asked if she believed “there is science that proves that man is not causing climate change”, she said: “Well, I think that both sides have, you know, their own results from their studies, and I appreciate and respect both sides of the science.” In June 2017, Trump, who has himself cast doubt on accepted climate science, withdrew the US from the Paris climate accord, a global pact designed to combat the effects of climate change.

President Trump on Friday announced Kelly Knight Craft, ambassador to Canada, as his nominee to become the next United States ambassador to the United Nations. Haley offered Craft her congratulations on Twitter following the announcement. "She’s done a great job representing us as @USAmbCanada and we know she’ll be a strong voice for America at the United Nations," Haley tweeted. “I am grateful to President Trump and Secretary [Mike] Pompeo for the trust they placed in me for considering me for the position of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations," Nauert said in the statement released by the State Department on Saturday. A State Department source told Fox News at the time that the confirmation process -- on top of traveling around the world and between Washington and New York to see family -- grew to be too much for Nauert. Craft was sworn in as the ambassador to Canada in September 2017 after being nominated to the position by Trump, according to her biography on the Embassy's website. "Ambassador Kelly Craft is a leader, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who has made community service and improving education the cornerstone of her career," her biography said. She has also served on the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees, and started a marketing and business advisory company, it said. Pompeo issued a statement saying he was "very pleased that President Trump has announced his intent to nominate Ambassador Kelly Craft to be our next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. "Ambassador Craft has been an outstanding advocate for America’s national security and economic interests in Canada and she is extremely well-qualified to do the same at the United Nations," he continued.

The state department says Donald Trump’s nominee for US ambassador to the United Nations, Heather Nauert, has withdrawn. The department released a statement on Saturday evening Washington time saying Nauert had withdrawn and another nominee would be announced “soon”. Nauert said she was grateful to Trump and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, for “the trust they have placed in me for considering me for the position of US ambassador”. Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) BREAKING: Heather Nauert Withdraws Name from consideration to be US Ambassador to UN. Trump called her “very talented, very smart, very quick” and said he thought she would be “respected by all.” In the wake of November elections that strengthened Republican control of the Senate, her confirmation appeared likely, if not easy. Yet Trump never put Nauert’s name forward with the Senate and no confirmation hearing was scheduled. With no policymaking or negotiating experience, and after 20 months as a spokeswoman for the state department, Nauert would have taken her seat on the UN security council alongside counterparts with decades of experience. During Nauert’s tenure at the state department, press briefings went from being daily events to being held once or twice weekly. Nauert was mostly a polished and unflappable defender of administration policy, smoothing over frequent rifts between Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and the White House. But her inexperience sometimes shone through: in June she cited the D-day landings as evidence of the longstanding relationship between Washington and Berlin.

Mr Trump has always approached the presidency like a reality television producer, which was his most successful previous role. No programme has been more closely linked to Mr Trump than his favourite, the inane morning chat show Fox & Friends. Blonde and attractive in the standard Fox News mould, Ms Nauert no doubt seemed straight out of Mr Trump’s vision of “central casting”, especially since she was unencumbered by any relevant diplomatic or administrative experience or expertise. _______________ Read more from Hussein Ibish: _______________ But central casting can be unreliable. The appointment of such a relative nonentity to the UN position conveys precisely the kind of disdain for multilateral institutions that Mr Bolton has championed. Moreover, she will be in no position whatsoever to challenge Mr Bolton’s command of US foreign policy and her media-centred and skimpy resume suggests the most she will be expected to do is defend other people’s policies on television. Along with Vice President Mike Pence, she was one of two potential successors as president within the administration. By the time Mr Trump had to replace Mr Tillerson, Ms Haley had ruled herself out as a candidate because she had used her UN post to become too powerful and independent. But Ms Haley was one of the most senior of Mr Trump’s initial appointees. Even if she does end up sitting in the cabinet, however, Ms Nauert’s appointment will strongly solidify Mr Bolton’s pre-eminence in foreign policy-making, typically in coordination with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Pushing back against criticism of her lack of diplomatic experience, Donald J. Trump’s choice to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Heather Nauert, said on Friday that a memorable visit to the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disney World made her eminently qualified for the U.N. post. “When people look at me, they think Heather Nauert, former Fox News anchor,” Nauert told reporters at the State Department. “What they don’t realize is I’m also Heather Nauert, who went on ‘It’s a Small World’ three times when she was nine.” Nauert said that, while career diplomats might spend twenty to thirty years learning about only one country, “I learned about twenty-five countries in fifteen minutes.” Laying out her objectives for her tenure at the United Nations, the prospective Ambassador said, “Right now I’m just looking forward to seeing all of the other Ambassadors wearing their festive costumes and doing their dances. That’s going to be amazing, I think.” Nauert bristled when a reporter asked about her controversial comment that D Day was evidence of the long-standing bond between Germany and the United States. “At the end of the day, there is just one moon and one golden sun, and a smile means friendship to everyone,” she said.

(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is expected to announce he will nominate State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert to be the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, officials familiar with the plans said Thursday. Two administration officials confirmed Trump’s plans. A Republican congressional aide said the president was expected to announce his decision by tweet on Friday morning. The officials were not authorized to speak publicly before Trump’s announcement. Trump has previously said Nauert was under serious consideration to replace Nikki Haley, who announced in October that she would step down at the end of this year. She was a reporter for Fox News Channel before she became State Department spokeswoman under former secretary Rex Tillerson. Plucked from Fox by the White House to serve as State Department spokeswoman, Nauert catapulted into the upper echelons of the agency’s hierarchy when Tillerson was fired in March. Nauert, who did not have a good relationship with Tillerson and had considered leaving the department, told associates at the time she was taken aback by the promotion offer and recommended a colleague for the job. But when White House officials told her they wanted her, she accepted. Nauert was a breaking news anchor on Trump’s favorite television show, “Fox & Friends,” when she was tapped to be the face and voice of the administration’s foreign policy.

Donald Trump has decided to name the state department spokeswoman Heather Nauert as the ambassador to the United Nations, a source familiar with his decision told Reuters. Trump’s decision was first reported by Bloomberg News. Haley has held the post since the beginning of Trump’s administration and said she would stay in the job through the end of the year. Nauert, whose nomination would require Senate confirmation, is a former Fox News Channel correspondent and anchor. She does not have prior political or policy-making experience. She met with Trump at the end of October, fueling speculation that she had emerged as the president’s top choice for the role. “She’s excellent. She’s been with us a long time,” Trump said of Nauert last month. Officials at the White House at times viewed Haley with skepticism, in part over her willingness to publicly disagree with the president. Haley took a particularly forceful posture against Russia, assailing the Kremlin at UN security council meetings over its aggression in Ukraine and support for Bashar al-Assad in Syria, even as Trump remained reluctant to criticize Vladimir Putin.

President Donald Trump has told advisers that Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman, is his leading choice to become US ambassador to the United Nations and he could offer the post as soon as this week, two sources familiar with…