Fired for mentioning Obama in a positive light

Lewis Lukens was the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in London until November 2018 when he was fired by the U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Woody Johnson, seven months before he was scheduled to depart for a new assignment.

According to GQ, Lukens asserts the reason he was fired was because he had told an anecdote about Obama in a speech he gave to a pair of British universities right before Halloween.

In the speech, Lukens briefly depicted Obama's 2013 trip to Senegal, in which he was met with large cheering crowds with shirts that read "WE LOVE OBAMA." But what impressed him the most, Lukens said, was disagreement Obama and Senegalese President Macky Sall had "as friends."

[...]

Lukens's career in the State Department spanned nearly 30 years and featured presidents from both parties.

  The Hill

But, he praised Obama.

In 2009, approximately 21,000 people took the American foreign service exam. This year, according to AFSA, that number is just over 9,000.

Currently, a third of all foreign service jobs in U.S. embassies and consulates remain unfilled and the process of remedying the vacancies has become immobilized by impeachment proceedings, GQ reports.

A new report from the Australia-based Lowy Institute, which annually issues a Diplomacy Index, shows that China leapfrogged the U.S. for the most diplomatic power in the world.

UPDATE 7/22/20: Or maybe that's NOT the reason he was fired. (Or the only reason.)