Donald Trump doesn’t have the least idea how to conduct diplomacy.
No wonder why: he is not in the least diplomatic. He’s a New Yorker, and so is his Shadow Secretary of State, another loudmouth, i.e., lawyer Rudy Giuliani — a lawyer at serious risk of disbarment.
Today, Ruissian-American Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch, a very well-respected Senior Foreign Service professional diplomat, and our former Ambassador to Ukraine, excoriated Trump in her testimony in Congress (so much for Mike Pompeo’s supposed cooperation with Trump in his strident and obstructive non-cooperation with the Impeachment Inquiry).
As he was bribing Ukraine’s President, former comedian Volodymyr Zelensky, on July 25, Trump trashed Ambassador Yovanovitch, a Russian-American, whom he had recalled in May.
Today she testified in Congress and cogently explained that the reason why Trump recalled her was because she was not a team player for Team Trump (https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/politics/yovanovitch-statement-breakdown/index.html).
Our chief Congressional correspondent, associate soitary reporter Melissa Smith, was in the closed-door hearing, so she heard everything that Ambassador Yovanovitch said to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Eliot Engel (D-NY).
“In all my 30 years as a career Foreign Service officer,” Yovanovich told Rep. Engel, “I have never served under a Commander-in-Chief who is so intent on causing serious and irreparable harm to our country.”
Elsewhere, though Fox News is very pro-Trump, Fox News’ Shepard Smith has said goodbye to that channel; seems the News section of Fox News is at war with the Opinion section (https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/media/shepard-smith-leaving-fox-news/index.html).
Shepard Smith told associate solitary reporter Susanna Sherman that he plans, as a private citizen, to interview Kevin McAleenan, who has just quit TrumpWorld. McAleenan was Trump’s Acting Secretary of Homeland Security (https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/politics/mcaleenan-resigns-homeland-security-secretary/index.html).
Bui Shepard Smith paused a moment and then told ASR Sherman that he would prefer to interview, instead, Jane Fonda, who managed to get herself arrested today outside the Capitol for her participation in “Fire Drill Friday,” a civil disobedience effort to raise awareness of environmental challenges.