While the Trump administration pushes its “America First” agenda, reducing foreign aid agencies and challenging the allies for a long time, President Donald Trump has taken advantage of ABC News a list of ambassadors with more personal and financial ties than any recent president, former diplomats and experts in foreign policies to ABC News.
Trump, in just over 100 days in office, selected family members, rich members of his clubs and sponsors of the high profile media to carry out his mission “America Fick” in the posts of advanced key worldwide. Almost all have long public and vocal support records to the President, while only a handful have diplomatic history or experience in foreign services.
Trump diplomat nominees have also collectively poured tens of millions of dollars into their political operations, with the so -called “donor to the embassy pipe”, where the main political fund collectors ensure the luxurious appointments of luxurious ambassadors, increasingly pronounced under the second presidency of Trump.
“It is the sale of diplomatic positions in exchange for the campaign money, and both parties have been playing that,” said Anthony Gardner, former ambassador to the European Union under the Biden administration. “In fact, it has been happening through the hall for a long time, even for decades, and has become much more pronounced in this term, Trump’s second term, than never.”
At least 38 of the 50 individuals announced or confirmed to diplomatic positions so far they have donated or helped raise funds for political entities connected to Trump, directing at least $ 46 million to their presidential campaigns, several Super-Trump Super PACS or the second opening Committee Trump’s record, as shown by the dissemination records. These figures do not take into account the additional contributions grouped by those people.
In comparison, according to the analysis of the Legal Center of the Legal Center of the Government Ethics Defense Group of 2023, those appointed by former President Joe Biden, appointed together, gave a total of $ 22 million to several candidates and Democratic groups, including the Biden campaign, in the ten years before his nomination.
Trump has also taken advantage of several members of his extended family for diplomatic roles, payrolling Charles Kushner, the father -in -law of his eldest daughter, as an ambassador to France, and Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former student of his greatest son, as an ambassador of Greece.
President Donald Trump expects the arrival of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the White House in Washington, on May 6, 2025.
Jim Watson/AFP through Getty Images
ABC News has communicated with the White House to comment.
Ed McMullen, a prolific republican Bundler and former Trump ambassador to Switzerland, says that a close personal relationship with the president can be a key strength as an ambassador, pointing to Guilfoyle as an example.
“From the founding parents, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin served as our first ambassadors were close to the president,” said McMullen. “There are followers, they are donors, they are workers, they are friends. This is the case with each ambassador.”
“When you are in Europe or anywhere in the world, and you are an ambassador that represents the president of the United States and you can lift the phone and call it and have an individual relationship with the president, the president and the government of the country in which you are lodged will be extremely appreciated by that timely efficacy that occurs from that,” said McMullen, who recovers his experience as an embassy under the first presidency of Trump.
“That is the purpose of having people named policies and not careers in critical countries with allies and friends,” he said.
But the senior of the ethics of the ethics of Campaign Center, Kedric Payne, told ABC News that if the nominees do not have prior diplomatic experience beyond their personal relationship with the president, he can leave the impression that “the qualifications do not matter as much as he knows.”
“When it has something as critical as foreign policy based on who knows, confidence in government decreases that these decisions are not based on the greatest public interest,” Payne said.
Trump diplomatic nominees, such as their cabinet teams, also include a high number of high -value people. For the G7 Alliance of the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom, Trump has gathered one of the richest ambassadors groups to maintain those places, with three billionaires of the five nominees who have been named so far.
The three billionaires, Kushner, the Republican Megadonor and the Financial Warren Stephens, and the owner of the Houston Rockets, Tilman Futtitta, revealed revealed assets that could use a combined value of more than $ 8 billion. Kushner, who revealed the scope of his private wealth for the first time, informed that he had assets that potentially are worth more than $ 3.6 billion, with a vast portfolio of real estate in the United States and report profits of up to half a billion dollars in revenue last year.
The other two G7 ambassadors, George Glass and Pete Hoekstra, are returning diplomats from Trump’s first mandate.
Others who Trump have taken advantage of this time include Herschel Walker, the former NFL star who ran unsuccessfully to Georgia’s Senate in 2022; Bill White, Trump’s old friend and neighbor of Palm Beach who gathered conservative LGBTQ votes in Trump’s support during the latest presidential elections; and Leandro Rizzuto, an heir to Conair who was chosen as an ambassador during Trump’s first mandate, but was not confirmed by the Senate.
Among the campaign substitutes and the allies who have received embassies are Mayor Amer Ghalib from Hamtramck, Michigan, who helped gather Muslim voters in Michigan for Trump; Catholicvote.org, co -founder Brian Burch, vocal critic of the late Pope Francis; and the former leader of the Border Patrol Union, Bradon Judd, who often talked about immigration and border security in Trump Rallies.
Several of those nominees have already faced a difficult confirmation process, since critics have questioned their qualifications.
Last week, Kushner, who declared himself guilty of 18 positions related to the illegal contributions of the campaign and tax evasion in 2004 and was forgiven by Trump a month before he left the White House in his first mandate, was pressed by the Senate Democrats about his previous legal problems during his confirmation hearing.
During the audience, Kushner acknowledged that his encounter past with the law was “a very, very serious mistake”, but maintained that his experience has helped him make better judgments and has done it “more qualified” for the role of ambassador.
Other ambassador nominees who have faced legal problems include White, Belgium ambassador and former head of the Sea, Air in New York. & Space Museum, which paid a $ 1 million agreement for its alleged role in an alleged illegal scheme of state payment pension funds in New York, for which it denied irregularities.
The former president of the Trump Inaugural Committee, Tom Barrack, who was accused of alleged foreign lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates in 2021, was acquitted when a jury found him innocent for all his positions. Barrack has been nominated to serve as a Trump ambassador to Turkey, a key diplomatic position that until recently was mainly celebrated by career diplomats, and promoted his experience dealing with “commercial, governmental, legal and cultural matters in Europe, the Middle East and Asia” in its competence certificate presented through the State Department.
Walker, who lost his career in the Senate to the Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock in the second round elections, faced accusations of violent behavior and forcing multiple women to abort, accusations he denied.
For Rizzuto, his nomination to become the ambassador of the Organization of American States is the second time he competes for an embassy, after facing the bipartisan opposition during Trump’s first mandate for his ambassador nomination to Barbados. Amnesia, “while accused of Senator Ted Cruz, Heidi of being a leader in the North American Union movement,” whose objective is to destroy the sovereignty of the United States. “
Trump, during his first term, finally appointed Rizzuto to lead the United States Consulate in Bermuda, which does not require Senate confirmation.
In the midst of diplomatic challenges that include the conflict in the Middle East and the negotiations of high -risk rates, only a handful of ambassadors have been confirmed and sworn at the time, including the former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, as the ambassador of the Israel ambassador, the former senator of Georgia Davie Davie forgive as the shipment to China and the campaign of the campaign of Trump. Georgia’s performance, the Mateoker General Mateo, the Mateo del Mateo de Trump and the general assistant of Matea to Matea NATO.
Huckabee, who is the father of Trump’s former press secretary and now the governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, has had a lucrative year in 2024, winning more than $ 6 million of her various private companies, including millions of television works and radio hosts and almost half a million each of the substitutes and the dozens of comforts of speaking, according to financial disseminations.
Many other ambassador nominees, including Walker and Guilfoyle, have not yet publicly released their financial revelations through the Government Ethics Office, nor have published their competence certificates through the State Department, which must occur before the Senate confirmation.
Payne, from the Legal Campaign Center, said that without these revelations, it is difficult to know the interests and financial grades of a nominee.
“It is not a problem that a person simply contributes to the president and becomes an ambassador,” Payne told ABC News. “The problem is when that person is not qualified for the position.”
Payne emphasized that it is too early to make general observations on the qualifications of Trump’s ambassador elections, but said that, regardless of who the president is, diplomats must be qualified for their role.
“What is happening in the Trump administration now, where foreign policy is so critical and so delicate according to the problems that are happening with rates and other administrative policies, it is the worst time to have unqualified representatives of the United States in these countries,” Payne said.
