Allies of Donald Trump are encouraging the president-elect to make the most of what he described as “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” by nominating a dyed-in-the-wool MAGA diplomat to serve as his secretary of state, rather than an America First convert as he did during his first term.
Enter Richard Grenell.
He is the former U.S. ambassador to Germany, who served previously as the acting director of national intelligence, and whose chief characteristic is an undying devotion to Trump. During the frenetic early days of the presidential transition, a number ofnames have already been floated, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty. Grenell, a firebrand whose name gives establishment foreign policy circles heartburn, is already lining up support from divergent corners of the GOP.
“He would be a break from precedent in the same way that President Trump’s foreign policy worldviews are a break with precedent,” said Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who has discussed a Grenell nomination with the Trump transition team.
The incoming president and his foreign policy players will soon confront a world on fire. There is a land war in Ukraine, which Trump has promised to end even before taking the oath of office. The president-elect has also vowed to bring peace to the Middle East by bringing the Israel-Gaza conflict to a close. Across the globe, meanwhile, an increasingly aggressive China threatens Western interests.
Dealing with those challenges will begin by naming a top diplomat to take over the State Department, which Lee described in an interview with RealClearPolitics as a bureaucratic “can of worms.” Grenell is particularly suited to that kind of work, added South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, because he “knows where the bodies are buried.”
While Grenell has his detractors, particularly those within the foreign policy establishment, Lee and Graham both point to not just his work in the Trump administration but also his time as a State Department spokesman assigned to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration. Perhaps more important than any diplomatic credential is the fact that he maintains perfect Trump fluency.
“You have got to have a secretary of state who understands the world from Trump’s viewpoint in terms of trying to expand alliances and end wars. The closer the person is to President Trump,” Graham told RCP, “probably the better view they have.”
Graham, a longtime confidant of the former and future president, said that while every name he has heard floated would be “a good outstanding choice,” when it comes to Grenell, “there’s nobody, I think, who has been closer to President Trump since 2016.”
Not everyone has been so sympatico with Trump. During his first term, the former president tapped Rex Tillerson, the CEO of ExxonMobil, to be his top diplomat only for the relationship to quickly sour. At times, Tillerson found himself out of step with and blindsided by his boss, like when Trump undercut the diplomat’s efforts to negotiate with North Korea by tweeting that his secretary of state was “wasting his time.” Tillerson was later fired.
Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs in 2018 after losing his job, Tillerson was asked to describe Trump’s value. Replied the Texas oilman-turned-diplomat, “I cannot.”
For his part, Grenell has never strayed from Trump’s orbit. “I could be wrong,” said a former senior Trump official granted anonymity because they are also being considered for a role in the next administration, “but I think the job is probably his.”
The former ambassador remains a favorite of the Trump family, and for the last four years, he could often be seen in Mar-a-Lago at the former president’s side. Of particular importance, sources note, is the fact that Grenell “never wavered” after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. Other than longtime aide and confidant Jason Miller, the former official said, Grenell has “probably been the most loyal for the longest time.” That devotion has paid dividends. Grenell was with Trump in September during a meeting with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
Senate Republicans are eager to replace Secretary of State Antony Blinken and put someone in his place who will shake up the department.
“He does represent something new,” Lee said of Grenell and the MAGA doctrine he represents. “I think he sees that we have spent an unbelievable amount of money and expended a significant amount of American sweat, blood, and treasure on projects that are sometimes hard to tie back to an American success, or to outcomes that make that sacrifice fully worth it.”
Grenell is similar in this thinking to Trump but also style, a fact that has raised plenty of ire, not just in Washington, D.C., but around the world. He often feuds with reporters on social media when he takes issue with their reporting. He even earned a rebuke from German officials for blurring the lines of diplomacy and politics when he told Breitbart News in 2018 that he wanted to “empower” the European right. But brashness is an asset in Trump World.
“If you want to avoid war, you better have a son of a bitch as the secretary of state,” Grenell told the “Self Centered” podcast earlier this year. America needs a “tough” chief diplomat, he added, “who goes in to these tables and says: ‘Guys, if we don’t solve this here, if we don’t represent peace and figure out a tough way, I’ve got to take this file, go back to the United States and transfer it to the secretary of defense, who doesn’t negotiate. He’s going to bomb you.’”
Those kinds of comments may have made a candidate like Grenell untenable in other administrations or even during the early Trump era. But the president-elect will soon have a Republican majority in the Senate to help grease the appointment process. And anti-Trump Republicans who might hamper the nomination, like Sen. Mitt Romney, are increasingly rare. Lee said that there is growing concern with nominating from within the GOP Senate chamber for fear of raiding the Republican bench at the time the White House would need them most. “We’ve got to be careful not to take senators out of commission,” he explained, “because we're going to need all hands on deck.”
Although Trump named Susie Wiles as his White House chief of staff, he has not yet moved to fill his cabinet. Whoever he wants, predicted Graham, he will get.
“We’re going to have at least 53 senators. And I’ve got no doubt that if he was nominated by President Trump, he would get confirmed,” Graham said of Grenell.
Added Lee, “Grenell is in lockstep with President Trump. I can’t point to anything in his persona and his background that would make him wildly unacceptable to other people.”
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