{"id":29982,"date":"2017-01-07T10:21:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-07T15:21:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=29982"},"modified":"2017-01-07T10:21:42","modified_gmt":"2017-01-07T15:21:42","slug":"its-amazing-how-the-narrative-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=29982","title":{"rendered":"It’s Amazing How The Narrative Changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Breitbart.com<\/a> posted an article about Donald Trump’s<\/a> dismissal of politically appointed ambassadors. If you have seen the story in the mainstream media, it is probably accompanied by some level of hysterical hand-wringing. Well, wait a minute.<\/p>\n

The article quotes The New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The mandate \u2014 issued \u201cwithout exceptions,\u201d according to a terse State Department<\/a> cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said \u2014 threatens to leave the United States<\/a> without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a case-by-case basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mr. Trump, by contrast, has taken a hard line against leaving any of President Obama<\/a>\u2019s political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20 with a mission of dismantling many of his predecessor\u2019s signature foreign and domestic policy achievements. \u201cPolitical\u201d ambassadors, many of them major donors who are nominated by virtue of close ties with the president, almost always leave at the end of his term; ambassadors who are career diplomats often remain in their posts.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But (as usual) there is more to the story. The article reports:<\/p>\n

Fox News recalls the Washington Post<\/i><\/a> reporting the news in December 2008 without the slightest hint of disapproval, or a single heartstring-tugging anecdote about the difficulties faced by the ambassadors and their families:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The clean slate will open up prime opportunities for the president-elect to reward political supporters with posts in London, Paris, Tokyo and the like. The notice to diplomatic posts was issued this week.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political ambassadors sometimes are permitted to stay on briefly during a new administration, but the sweeping nature of the directive suggests that Obama has little interest in retaining any of Bush\u2019s ambassadorial appointees.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most ambassadors, of course, are foreign service officers, but often the posts involving the most important bilateral relations (such as with Great Britain, Japan and India) or desirable locales (such as the Bahamas<\/a>) are given to close friends and well-heeled contributors of the president.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article further reminds us:<\/p>\n

The Center for Public Integrity<\/a> counted 31 Obama campaign \u201cbundlers\u201d \u2014\u00a0good for at least $500,000 in donations \u2014 named as ambassadors, mostly to Western Europe<\/a> and other \u201chighly developed and stable countries such as Canada and New Zealand.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAnother 39 of Obama\u2019s second-term<\/a> ambassador nominees are political appointees who either gave his campaign money or are known political allies. They, too, largely enjoyed postings to wealthy and peaceful nations \u2014 Ireland, Denmark and Australia, for example \u2014 or high-profile countries such as China and India,\u201d the Center added.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is quite possible that President Trump will also reward supporters with ambassadorships, but somehow I suspect the media will handle it very differently than they did with President Obama.<\/p>\n

Just as a side note–is there anywhere that President Obama’s foreign policy was so successful that we should hang on to his ambassadors? Actually, I am hoping that the entire State Department will be fired for the horrendous job they have done during the past eight years.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted an article about Donald Trump’s dismissal of politically appointed ambassadors. If you have seen the story in the mainstream media, it is probably accompanied by some level of hysterical hand-wringing. Well, wait a minute. The article quotes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3357,8558,8367],"class_list":["post-29982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-donald-trump","tag-the-new-york-times","tag-the-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29983,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29982\/revisions\/29983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}