WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump introduced Saturday that he is picked longtime international coverage adviser Richard Grenell to function an envoy for particular missions, tasking him with serving to the incoming administration cope with among the hardest international coverage challenges.
Grenell served as ambassador to Germany throughout Trump’s first administration, particular presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations, and did a stint as appearing director of nationwide intelligence.
He was additionally a contender to function secretary of state, however Trump opted to appoint Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“Ric will work in among the hottest spots across the World, together with Venezuela and North Korea,” Trump mentioned in a posting on his social media platform, Truth Social, saying the appointment.
Grenell throughout Trump’s first time period developed a fame for using a typically contentious strategy to diplomacy that rankled allies and the international coverage institution in Washington. But his fashion was appreciated by the president-elect who sees worth in blunt speak with allies.
Grenell remained near Trump after he left workplace in 2021, serving at occasions as a key adviser on international coverage.
He was within the room when Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in September. Grenell has advocated for a peace deal that will protect Ukraine’s territory whereas nonetheless permitting for “autonomous areas” the place Russia might stay in management.
He’s additionally suggested towards increasing NATO to incorporate Ukraine, saying — as Trump has — that the alliance shouldn’t develop till present members meet the alliance’s protection spending targets. Members of the transatlantic alliance have dedicated for years to spending 2% of their GDP on protection, however a number of international locations nonetheless fall wanting the goal.
He was an early supporter of Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign and held a number of occasions for the Republican nominee targeted on economics and nationwide safety.
Speaking on the Republican National Convention, Grenell echoed Trump’s mantra that “it’s time to place America first” on the worldwide stage and argued that China and Russia noticed President Joe Biden’s administration as weak.
Trump raised considerations amongst some allies in the course of the 2024 marketing campaign when he mentioned he wouldn’t defend NATO members that failed to satisfy protection spending targets, and warned he would “encourage” Russia “to do regardless of the hell they need” to alliance international locations that he thought of “delinquent.”
Grenell has downplayed Trump’s criticisms of NATO and mentioned the one speak of leaving the alliance altogether “was actually from the media.”
“What we’re saying is, don’t come to the marriage with no present,” Grenell mentioned.
Grenell was a part of the Trump marketing campaign’s outreach to Arab American voters in Michigan, the place the president-elect made positive aspects with a historically Democratic constituency regardless of his historical past of banning immigration from a number of majority-Muslim international locations. Grenell orchestrated pro-Trump occasions with Arab American voters, together with a May assembly held in Troy, Michigan.
A U.S. spokesman on the United Nations in the course of the George W. Bush administration, Grenell, like many different Republicans, has his historical past of criticizing Trump earlier than embracing him.
Once an adviser to GOP moderates like 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney and a supporter of homosexual marriage, Grenell, who’s brazenly homosexual, deleted social media posts blasting Trump as “reckless” and “harmful” as soon as the previous actuality TV star grew to become the Republican nominee in 2016.
Trump additionally introduced Saturday that he’s appointing Devin Nunes, the chief govt officer of the president-elect’s Truth Social platform, to go a presidential advisory board that can hold tabs on the U.S. intelligence group.
Nunes will proceed main the Trump Media & Technology Group. Trump is the corporate’s largest shareholder.
The former California lawmaker chaired the House Intelligence Committee and was certainly one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress in the course of the president-elect’s first time period.
