CEO Morning Brief

Trump to Tap New York Ally Stefanik as UN Ambassador

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Publish date: Wed, 13 Nov 2024, 09:10 PM
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TheEdge CEO Morning Brief

(Nov 12): Donald Trump will nominate New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik to join his administration as US ambassador to the United Nations.

“Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter,” Trump said in a statement.

The UN job — a high-profile national security role that comes with offices and a residence in New York City — would bring one of Trump’s highest-profile congressional allies into his administration. Stefanik, 40, is currently the fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives.

Stefanik’s office confirmed the president-elect offered her the job and she accepted. The New York Post first reported the decision on Sunday.

In an interview on Friday on 77 WABC radio in New York, Stefanik said she is ready to help Trump any way she can, including as a member of his administration because, she said, “he needs strong allies”.

Her devotion to Trump has a long public track record. Stefanik was among the 147 House Republicans who voted against certifying then president-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over Trump. She was the first House member to endorse Trump in this third White House bid, and was even a contender earlier this year to be Trump’s vice presidential running mate.

Cuban’s criticism

In Trump’s first administration, he appointed former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley as his original UN envoy. Haley mounted an unsuccessful bid for the Republican nomination against Trump this cycle before ultimately dropping out and endorsing him; the president-elect said last week he would not be inviting her to rejoin his administration.

In the final days of this year’s presidential campaign, the Harvard University graduate quickly stepped up to publicly respond to billionaire Mark Cuban’s assertion that Trump did not surround himself with strong and intelligent women — pointing to herself as proof that he was wrong.

“I’m proud to be the highest-ranking woman in the United States Congress,” Stefanik said in a video. “I’m the most senior woman on the House Arms Services Committee, the House Intelligence Committee and I proudly am voting and endorse President Trump.”

Stefanik’s ability to seize the political moment is a skill she’s refined during her five terms in Congress. Over her time in office, Stefanik pivoted from being a bipartisan lawmaker representing a rural district stretching from the Canadian border to the Albany area to a die-hard MAGA loyalist and star in a Republican Party reshaped by Trump.

She grabbed headlines over the past year by helping lead the GOP charge against her alma mater, Harvard University, and top administrators of other universities over alleged campus antisemitism — a controversy that eventually led to the Harvard president’s resignation.

Stefanik has spoken publicly in the past about how much she loved the university, from which she graduated in 2006. She focused there on government studies, and wrote for the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. She taught civics to public school students in Boston and Cambridge, and helped run a study group for the late Ted Sorensen, who wrote speeches for former president John F Kennedy.

But Harvard removed Stefanik from an advisory board after she made comments supporting Trump’s false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

Before Harvard, Stefanik had attended a tony all-girls prep school in Albany. After college she worked as a staffer to George W Bush and developed a reputation for working across the aisle with Democrats. At age 30, she became the then-youngest woman elected to Congress.

Rightward shift

Initially, during the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump’s early years in office, Stefanik was openly critical of him on issues ranging from building the border wall to his rhetoric on women and Muslims.

She also voted against his 2017 tax-cut legislation and joined a bipartisan chorus of people calling on him to release his tax returns. But by 2019 she had made a rightward turn, even describing herself as “ultra-MAGA,” in reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

When Trump’s House allies voted to remove Liz Cheney as the GOP conference chair in 2021 over her repeated criticism of him, the shakeup led to Stefanik being chosen to succeed her in that leadership post.

Separately, Trump said he’ll install Tom Homan, the former acting head of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, as a “border czar” with oversight over immigration, maritime and aviation security.

Homan was the public face of Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies during his first term, which broke with the practice of keeping families together during detention and deportation proceedings. Making him a “czar” based in the White House means Homan won’t have to face Senate confirmation.

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Source: TheEdge - 13 Nov 2024

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