Chris Murphy Warns Trump Ambassador Nominees They're Being Sent 'Largely Unarmed And Defenseless'

Forbes Breaking News

At today's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) warned ambassador nominees that Trump Administration policies will make their jobs much more difficult.

Transcript

00:00opening remarks. Thank you very much, Senator Haggerty. Thank you to all of our nominees for

00:05your families for appearing before the committee today. Mr. Buchan, congratulations on your

00:12nomination to serve once again as a U.S. ambassador. As you know, our relationship with

00:17Morocco is strong. It's important. It's resilient. We look to Morocco as a leader in the region. This

00:24is a very important post. Mr. Giordano, you're headed to the other side of the continent,

00:28to Namibia. It's one of 10 African countries that's ranked free by Freedom House. That's

00:34important. Namibia's got huge economic potential, new oil discoveries that could triple the country's

00:42economy over the next decade. That's a plus and a minus. It's obviously a real opportunity,

00:48but it's a situation that's also ripe for corruption. Mr. Issa, have confirmed you're

00:54going to take the helm in Beirut. I've spent a lot of time in Beirut over the years. I'm frankly more

01:00optimistic about the country's future than I have been in years. The election of my friend,

01:05Joseph Vaughn, is in the formation of Lebanon's first government since 2022. It's put the country

01:10on a promising path, but they cannot survive without our support. So we need to capitalize on this early

01:18success, keep pushing through economic reforms all the while, while nurturing this really precarious

01:24ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. Mr. O'Neill, Thailand is a longtime treaty ally,

01:30economic partner of the United States, but coming off this recent outbreak of violence with its

01:35neighbor, Cambodia, we know how important it is for us to remain engaged with Thailand and in this

01:41delicate part of the world. And finally, Mustafa, you're nominated to lead our post in Kazakhstan,

01:47an increasingly important partner for the United States. Just to note that Senator Daines and I

01:53are working to remove a longstanding irritant in our relationship with Kazakhstan and that region in

02:00general by repealing the outdated Jackson-Bannock trade restriction that remains on the books from

02:06the Soviet era. Chairman Risch and Senator Sheen are supportive of this proposal. I appreciate that,

02:10and I hope that we can also count on your support. Stepping back, Mr. Chairman, a little bit, while I

02:16wish you all well in your work, if you're confirmed, I will just say that the Trump administration is

02:22sending you to these posts largely unarmed and defenseless. You won't command the military. What

02:28you will be in charge of is coordinating America's non-military national security tools, but you're going

02:35to find when you get there that they largely don't exist any longer. Our aid programs have been

02:40shuttered. President Trump is closing down organizations that expose Chinese and Russian

02:45propaganda and corruption. Thousands of diplomats, the people that you would have relied on to do the

02:51work of protecting our nation, are being fired, not for cause, but just to shrink our capacity to

02:57protect America. I'll give you a concrete example that impacts the posts that you'll be going to in

03:01Morocco and Namibia. Trump recently terminated, for no good reason, tens of millions of projects that

03:09help upgrade Africa's power grid. Now, China knows how Africa's economy is going to boom in the next 50

03:15years, so they want Chinese companies, not American companies, to have relationships. They know that many

03:20of the critical minerals that are going to be powering AI and defense systems come from Africa.

03:25So what happened? When Trump pulled back on this $80 million commitment to help power Africa, China

03:31stepped immediately into the void, announced $50 billion in financing for economic development and

03:37infrastructure in Africa. It was a self-defeating policy that delights our adversaries, and we see it

03:44happening over and over again. And finally, Mr. Chairman, given that this is my first chance to be a ranking member

03:50on one of these nominations committee hearings, just a word on the nominations process itself.

03:57The way in which President Trump is choosing ambassadors is without precedent, and we need to

04:03talk about it on this committee. Mr. Chairman, I think political ambassadors can be really

04:07effective and impactful in the right places and if they're the right people. Under every administration

04:14before this one, the percentage of ambassadors that were political as opposed to career foreign service

04:19mostly hovered between 25 and 40 percent. In President Trump's first term, it got up to close

04:25to 50 percent, but it's normally been in that 25 to 40 percent range. And this is really important

04:30because in addition to just the reality that many posts need to be led by a career diplomat because

04:38of the need for deep experience and knowledge, keeping a percentage of posts reserved for career

04:44diplomats is also essential to keeping qualified people in the diplomatic corps. If you think you're

04:50never going to become an ambassador, then really good people are just going to leave. But that seems to

04:54be the entire point of President Trump's nomination policy, to force mid-career diplomats to leave.

05:01As his OMB director said, the administration wants civil service employees to live, quote,

05:06in trauma. Thus far in Trump's second term, the percentage of political nominees is not 40 percent.

05:12It's not 50 percent. It's not 70 percent. It's 95 percent. Fifty-eight out of the 61 nominees have been

05:20political. There have been three career nominees and two of them are on this panel. That's unacceptable.

05:28That's bad policy. And this committee should not endorse this dangerous policy of giving nearly

05:33every single ambassadorial post to friends and political supporters of the president.

05:39I look forward to this nominations hearing. Again, thank you all for appearing.

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Transcript

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