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‘Building an authoritarian axis’: the Trump ‘envoy’ courting the global far right is unsettling diplomats and threatens to collapse US interests (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Meet Richard Grenell, vocal tribune of Trump’s America First credo on the international stage and the man hotly tipped to become secretary of state if the presumed Republican nominee beats Joe Biden in November’s presidential election.

A senior executive in the rightwing Newsmax cable channel, Grenell, 57, has crafted a persona as the archetypal Trump man, keen and ever-ready to troll liberals, allies and foreign statesmen in public forums and social media.

Grenell – who served as a rambunctious ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term – has carved a niche as the articulator-in-chief of a Maga approach to global affairs that appears to echo his political master’s voice.

Seasoned analysts fear his hyperactivity is already unsettling US diplomats even while Trump is out of office.

In recent months, for example, he has pitched up in Guatemala, where he tried to stymie US state department pleas for a peaceful transition of power by backing rightwing efforts to block the inauguration of the liberal president-elect, Bernardo Arévalo, on supposed electoral fraud grounds about a poll previously declared “free and fair” by international observers.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

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In recent months, he has pitched up in Guatemala, where he tried to stymie US state department pleas for a peaceful transition of power by backing rightwing efforts to block the inauguration of the liberal president-elect, Bernardo Arévalo, on supposed electoral fraud grounds about a poll previously declared “free and fair” by international observers.

He attempted to broker a meeting between Trump and Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at last year’s United Nations general assembly in New York at a time when the Turkish leader was blocking Sweden’s bid to join Nato, although the proposal was subsequently rejected amid security concerns.

For detractors, such talk is code for a transactional foreign policy tailored to Trump’s personal and business interests at the expense of America’s traditional democratic alliances – as well as a signal that Ukraine would be pressured to surrender territory to end its war with Russia.

The comment echoed Grenell’s crockery-breaking spell as ambassador to Berlin, where he infuriated his hosts on arrival by demanding that they renew sanctions on Iran after Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear deal agreed by Barack Obama’s administration – even though Germany still adhered to the agreement.

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