'It Could Have Been Any of Us': Disdain for Trump Runs Among Ambassadors [View all]

[octoberlib]

Ask members of the Washington diplomatic corps about the cables that Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador who resigned Wednesday, wrote to London describing the dysfunction and chaos of the Trump administration, and their response is uniform: We wrote the same stuff.

“Yes, yes, everyone does,” Gérard Araud, who retired this spring as the French ambassador, said on Wednesday morning of his own missives from Washington. “But fortunately I knew that nothing would remain secret, so I sent them in a most confidential manner

With a few exceptions — including the ambassadors from Israel and the United Arab Emirates, who have supported Mr. Trump’s every move — foreign diplomats in Washington these days describe living in something of a black hole.

Decisions that directly affect their nations’ trade relationships or troops are delivered with no notice. Their contacts inside the State Department, the Treasury and Congress freely tell them they have little idea what decisions Mr. Trump may make, or what he may reverse.


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/world/europe/kim-darroch-trump.html