Trump deconstructing America

Lana Marks is a successful fashion designer and member of U.S. President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Though she has no prior diplomatic experience, Marks is also Trump’s ambassador to South Africa, and last month she forced out her second in command, the veteran career foreign service officer David Young. According to multiple current and former officials familiar with the matter, the issue arose following Marks’s attempts to elevate her son to a senior role in the embassy, an apparent violation of State Department rules.

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Apart from her attempts to give her son a job with elevated responsibilities at the embassy, other embassy staff have been pushed out, including officials who worked on foreign aid and health programs in a country that is a major recipient of U.S. funds to tackle HIV and AIDS.

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Already, several of Trump’s political allies-turned-ambassadors—he has appointed a higher percentage than most previous presidents—have sacked their deputies amid a culture of mistrust between politically appointed and career State Department officials.

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Along with South Africa, Trump’s envoys in Canada, France, Iceland, Romania, and the United Kingdom have all removed their deputy chiefs of mission, some ambassadors doing so just shortly before or after arriving at their new posts.

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“We are deeply concerned by the number of removals of deputy chiefs of mission overseas, which are happening at way above the normal pace,” said Eric Rubin, a senior foreign service officer currently serving as president of the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents U.S. diplomats. “It’s generally very rare for a DCM to be removed by the ambassador. It does happen. Sometimes it happens for a good cause. But it’s rare. And it is now becoming an epidemic.”

  Foreign Policy

Four (actually five) more years and there will be no way to make up for this.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.