Finally, an unqualified candidate withdraws

US President Donald Trump's choice for ambassador to the United Nations, Heather Nauert, has withdrawn from consideration for the job for family reasons, according to the State Department.

  alJazeera

Her family will disown her if she takes the job.

"The past two months have been grueling for my family and therefore it is in the best interest of my family that I withdraw my name from consideration," Nauert said in a State Department statement on Saturday.

[...]

Nauert was State Department spokeswoman when Trump chose her for the UN position; prior to that, she had been a host on the conservative-leaning Fox News Channel.

[...]

Meanwhile, Bloomberg News, quoting anonymous sources, said Nauert's nomination began to falter after a White House background check discovered that Nauert employed a nanny who was legally in the United States but not authorised to work.

Nauert, 49, suggested in the statement that she was leaving government entirely, saying: "Serving in the administration for the past two years has been one of the highest honors of my life."

[...]

Calling Nauert "very talented, very smart, very quick", Trump said he thought she would be "respected by all".

And he thinks the rest of the world respects America again. Maybe he has an erroneous understanding of the meaning of the word.

In the wake of November elections that strengthened Republican control of the Senate, her confirmation appeared likely, if not easy.

Yet Trump never put Nauert's name forward with the Senate and no confirmation hearing was scheduled.

Hmmmm. What really happened?

The State Department in its statement that Trump would announce a nominee for the UN position "soon".

So, we just don't have a UN ambassador. Like so many other high level positions.

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

UPDATE:



Trump touted her for the job well before the shutdown on December 22.

Here's his public notice on December 7:



But, hey, maybe it would have taken two weeks to make the formal nomination.  It was a busy time.

Top of the US government

The Trump administration:



UPDATE:

It's going to be a huge undertaking for the next president (dear god, let there be a next one) to stock the government with qualified people.

Heather Nauert is an ex-Fox News personality who has spent the last year and a half being the spokesperson for the State Department.  That is the extent of her "qualifications".

Contrary to Trump's constant claim that America is respected again, America is a joke.  

The best people

The United Nations came into existence to vanquish Germany, as 26 nations jointly pledged in 1942 not to surrender to “savage and brutal forces seeking to subjugate the world.”

Three-quarters of a century later, the woman who would soon become President Trump’s pick to represent the United States at the United Nations cited the D-Day landings — a cornerstone of this unwavering Allied pledge and the basis of the Nazi defeat on the Western Front — to showcase the strength of German-American relations.

  WaPo

Jesus wept. Yes, Heather Nauert was a Fox personality before being called to work for the Trump administration.

“When you talk about Germany, we have a very strong relationship with the government of Germany,” Heather Nauert, the State Department’s spokeswoman, said in June. She added: “Tomorrow is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. We obviously have a very long history with the government of Germany, and we have a strong relationship with the government.” She also pointed to the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Western Europe in the ashes of Adolf Hitler’s quest for global domination.

The D-Day comment raised eyebrows over the summer, when some suggested it demonstrated a lack of historical understanding from the former “Fox & Friends” presenter who gained prominence on television during the Monica Lewinsky scandal but has no diplomatic experience. This critique is emerging again as she prepares to move to New York as the American ambassador to the United Nations.

[...]

As U.N. ambassador in 1962, Adlai Stevenson, a Navy veteran and former governor of Illinois, helped defuse the Cuban missile crisis. Arthur Goldberg had already been a Supreme Court justice when President Lyndon B. Johnson nominated him in 1965 to lead the American delegation to the United Nations. Richard C. Holbrooke, who had previously served as ambassador to Germany, helped broker the 1995 Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian War.

Nikki Haley, who is serving as the American ambassador, lacked foreign policy experience when she was nominated by Trump last year. But she had been elected twice as the governor of South Carolina.

[...]

[Nauert] has broadcast just about every right-wing talking-point under the sun, as documented extensively by the liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

[...]

She has spread conspiracies about the 2012 Benghazi attacks. In 2013, she said that a swimming group for Muslim girls at a YMCA in St. Paul, Minn., was evidence that “sharia law is now changing everything.”

[...]

“In terms of what we normally look for at the United Nations, her résumé is very thin,” David Gergen, the veteran presidential aide, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Thursday night. He said the role of U.N. representative was not a “communications job” but rather “a place where we conduct active diplomacy with nations around the world.”

She'll be great.

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