Elise Stefanik Next UN Ambassador

The MAGA Congresswoman is Trump's pick.

WSJ (“U.N. Ambassador Pick Elise Stefanik Has Been Top Trump Defender in Congress“):

In picking Rep. Elise Stefanik for the role of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, President-elect Donald Trump is rewarding one of his most loyal defenders in Congress, who also made headlines with her fierce questioning of college presidents over pro-Palestinian protests.

Stefanik, 40 years old, is the chair of the House Republican Conference, a position that makes her the only woman in House Republican leadership. She was once considered a long-shot pick to join Trump on the ticket as vice president.

“Elise is an incredibly strong, tough and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement Monday.

The post is subject to Senate confirmation. Trump chose another prominent Republican, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, for the U.N. role in his first term. Their relationship later soured, and she ran unsuccessfully against Trump in this year’s GOP primaries. Despite some efforts to patch things up, Trump said over the weekend that she wouldn’t serve in his second administration.

A Harvard graduate, Stefanik was elected in 2014 as Congress’s youngest woman at the time. She moved away from moderate policy positions to embrace Trump’s, following the will of voters in her district, she has said. In 2016, Stefanik pointedly refused to say Trump’s name after he won the GOP nominating contest; she said she would support “my party’s nominee.”

But in recent years, she has gained prominence for her fierce loyalty to the president-elect. She reaped record campaign donations in 2020 after she vigorously defended Trump during his 2019 impeachment. In 2022, she endorsed him in the presidential race before he had announced publicly that he would run. That made her the first member of Congress to do so.

Stefanik again garnered national attention after her aggressive questioning of Ivy League college presidents at a House hearing on antisemitism on college campuses in December. She publicly pressured them to quit over their handling of pro-Palestinian protests. Two of them—University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill and Harvard University’s Claudine Gay—later resigned.

Stefanik, who sits on the armed services and intelligence committees, said in a statement that “catastrophically weak U.S. leadership” during the Biden administration “significantly weakened our national security.” She said she is ready to advance Trump’s “restoration of America First peace-through-strength leadership on the world stage.”

NYT (“What to Know About Elise Stefanik, Trump’s Pick for U.N. Ambassador“) adds:

Ms. Stefanik, 40, would bring relatively little diplomatic or foreign policy experience to the role, beyond having served as a member of House national security committees.

[…]

Her foreign policy views track with Mr. Trump’s. A staunch supporter of Israel, she has repeatedly accused the U.N. of being plagued by “antisemitic rot” and proposed blocking funding for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees.

[…]

Few figures have better embodied the rapid evolution of the Republican Party under Mr. Trump than Ms. Stefanik.

After graduating from Harvard, she joined the George W. Bush administration as a domestic policy aide, helped write the Republicans’ 2012 party platform and prepared Representative Paul D. Ryan for that year’s vice-presidential debate.

In 2014, Ms. Stefanik won her House seat at age 30, flipping a Democratic-held district by running as a millennial moderate. Once in Congress, she eventually secured seats on the Armed Services and Intelligence Committees, and was a protégée of Mr. Ryan, who became speaker before falling out with Mr. Trump.

Ms. Stefanik, too, initially kept the disruptive president at an arm’s length. But beginning in 2019, as Democrats prepared to impeach Mr. Trump for the first time, she undertook a dramatic transformation that brought her ever closer to the center of his orbit.

She embraced many of the conspiracy theories undergirding Mr. Trump’s claims that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. In 2021, when House Republicans ousted Liz Cheney as their conference chairwoman for repudiating Mr. Trump’s election lies, Ms. Stefanik stepped in as her successor.

She also adopted Mr. Trump’s pugilistic style. Speaking at his rally at Madison Square Garden last month in the presidential campaign’s closing days, she warned of “illegals swarming our streets,” blamed Democrats for kneecapping the police and accused them of undertaking a never-ending “witch hunt” against Mr. Trump.

Others have used the post — which comes with a taxpayer-funded penthouse apartment in Manhattan — as a step toward higher office.

Stefanik was certainly not on my radar for the post, but she’s reasonably qualified for it. Service on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees means she’s well briefed on national security matters. I would expect easy confirmation. (Oddly, the job is only in the Cabinet when the President wants it to be. It was with Haley but not with her successor under Trump; whether Trump has changed his mind or whether Stefanik insisted on it as a condition for acceptance I don’t know.)

She has significantly less foreign affairs experience than the incumbent, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, but more than Nikki Haley and, arguably, Samantha Power. Offhand, I worry that she lacks a diplomatic temperament but, then again, John Bolton also held the job.

In terms of domestic politics, the WSJ report notes that,

Under New York law, the governor is required to call a special election within roughly 90 days of the office becoming vacant, which is expected in early January. Party leaders would pick the candidates in that contest.

The district lines would have been redrawn ahead of the 2022 elections. Considering it has twice re-elected Stefanik, one presumes it’s safely Republican now.

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor of Security Studies. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. wr says:

    At least she’s out of Congress this way.

    And I can only imagine this job will be as great a steppingstone to higher power as it was for her predecessor under Trump. What was her name again? Bird something?

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  2. Charley in Cleveland says:

    They’re all “qualified” when the only qualification for a Trump administration post is blind loyalty to DJT.

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  3. James Joyner says:

    @Charley in Cleveland: Comparing their actual policy credentials to those of predecessors is reasonable. Stefanik is middle of the pack in that regard.

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  4. Beth says:

    I don’t know why, but this seems like a snub to me. Almost an FU. I mean, I think the UN is important, but Republicans don’t. What’s the point of sending her? To yell at people? That’s gonna go over like a wet fart in church over there.

    Also, doesn’t she have actual power in congress? I get that Republicans couldn’t cooperate even if someone was paying them, but still. I dunno, this seems like she’s being sidelined.

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  5. She strikes me as acceptably, but thinly, qualified.

    But she has earned her reward by being a loyalist after having, IIRC, an initial reputation as a fairly moderate member of the House.

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  6. Lucysfootball says:

    IIRC Stefanik repeatedly talked about going after judges who issued rulings unfavorable to Trump. She does not respect the rule of law. Nobody who does not respect the rule of law should be appointed to any position in an administration. If I had a company I would not hire her to shovel shit (apologies to shit shovelers).

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  7. Mikey says:

    @Lucysfootball:

    Nobody who does not respect the rule of law should be appointed to any position in an administration.

    Well, it seems logical to expect appointees who don’t respect the rule of law from a President who doesn’t.

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  8. just nutha says:

    @Beth: This is my take, too. Seems like a backwards step rather than a step up. Not even a lateral step.

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  9. just nutha says:

    @Mikey: Exactly! Trump’s not likely to appoint any “rule of law” types unless we’re using my cynical take that “rule of law” happens when the speaker approves of the outcome.

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  10. Al Ameda says:

    Silver Lining: out of Congress.

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