When your goal is to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” because it is “weak”, “decaying” and facing “civilisational erasure”, your choice of highly trained operatives for the mission is plainly of paramount importance.
In Donald Trump’s case they include: a former burger magnate; his eldest son’s former fiancee; the owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team; a producer of Broadway musicals; PayPal’s co-founder; and a convicted felon who is also his son-in-law’s father.
A new cohort of US ambassadors has in recent months been appointed to Europe’s capitals – and did not take long to raise eyebrows. They are “basically all relatives, close friends or big givers [donors]”, said one EU diplomat, who asked not to be named. “That’s always been the US tradition, but it’s never been quite this blatant. These are like Maga disciples.”
Others have been blunter. “The craziness of these nominations reflects a total contempt for human dignity, custom, and the law. Only whim matters,” said a former French envoy to the US, Gérard Araud, after one pick was announced.
Political appointees – often a euphemism for big supporters and donors – are a longstanding feature of US diplomacy and the least that can be said of the current crop, the last of whom arrived in October and November, is they are no exception.
Many are multimillionaires, some billionaires. Together, they have poured tens of millions of dollars into the Maga coffers. Nearly all have sung the president’s praises long and loud. Almost none have any kind of diplomatic experience at all.
Trump’s US security strategy, published in December, claims Europe faces imminent cultural collapse as migration turns parts of it “majority non-European” while the EU “undermines sovereignty”, censors free speech and “suppresses political opposition”.
Among those charged with persuading the old continent to change course is Charles Kushner, 71, a real-estate magnate with an estimated net worth of $3.2bn (£2.4bn). He is also the father of Jared Kushner, the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
In 2005, Kushner père, the US ambassador to Paris since May, pleaded guilty to 16 counts of tax evasion, making false statements and witness tampering (notably hiring a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law, who was testifying against him).
Kushner spent 14 months in prison before being pardoned by Trump in 2020. Three years later he expressed his gratitude by donating $1m to Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc Super Pac.
Tasked chiefly with lobbying Paris to relax French and EU regulations disliked by the US, Kushner instead made headlines with an open letter to the French president, Emmanuel Macron, criticising a lack of official action to tackle the “dramatic rise of antisemitism in France”.
More recently, days after Washington promised backing for “patriotic parties” as part of its effort to “make Europe great again”, the ambassador received Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella of France’s far-right National Rally (RN) for consultations.
“He’s here to do a job, and from Washington’s standpoint he’s doing it pretty well,” a source at the Quai d’Orsay, France’s foreign ministry, said of Kushner. “He’s close to Trump. They go back a long way. He’s not going to be questioning his remit.”
Other Trump loyalists dispatched to Europe include Andrew Puzder as the US ambassador to the EU. A former chief executive of the company that franchises the fast-food chains Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr, Puzder this month defended the new US security strategy.
Non-EU immigration was leading to “a decline in cultural values”, he said, adding that the US did not want see Europe lose its identity. “How much of their sovereignty did [EU member states] give up to be part of an economic union?” Puzder asked.
The US ambassador to Luxembourg is Stacey Feinberg, an entrepreneur, investor, Republican donor, Broadway producer, heiress and good friend of the late far-right activist Charlie Kirk. She recently called Trump “the greatest US president since George Washington”.
Tilman Fertitta has been Washington’s man in Rome since the summer. The owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team and Landry’s, which operates more than 600 hotels, restaurants and casinos across the US, Fertitta is worth an estimated $10.7bn.
He is also the face of the TV show Billion Dollar Buyer and has been doing business for decades with Trump, who once referred to him as his “twin”. The ambassador’s 117-metre (384ft) megayacht, complete with two helipads and two pools, was launched this month.
A more recent arrival is Ken Howery, a co-founder of PayPal, who faces the particularly delicate challenge of convincing Denmark that, in Trump’s words, “US ownership and control” of the former Danish colony of Greenland is “an absolute necessity”.
After Donald Trump Jr’s visit to Nuuk in a Trump-branded plane last winter, then another, by the US vice-president, JD Vance, to an American military base, an alleged US influence campaign on the island led Denmark to summon the US charge d’affaires in August.
Howery, who arrived in Copenhagen at the end of October, has since embarked on a non-stop charm offensive, with social media footage showing him telling embassy staff he had loved the Danish capital since he first visited as a 20-year-old backpacker.
Early impressions in Copenhagen seem cautiously optimistic, despite the aggressive tone of Trump’s new security strategy. “The shared impression is that he [Howery] is a nice fellow, calm, not like other people in the Maga community,” said a source.
But the source added that Howery would still have to do what his boss said. And the US ambassador has wasted little time, visiting Nuuk in December for an annual meeting. “Ambassador Howery is already looking forward to next year,” the embassy said afterwards.
An even more recent Washington dispatch is the new US ambassador to Greece, the erstwhile Fox News host and former Trump Jr fiancee Kimberly Guilfoyle, who arrived in Athens amid much glitz and diplomatic glamour in November.
“You will enjoy this journey,” she said at a welcoming party organised by a friend, the Greek pop star Konstantinos Argyros. “I will not disappoint the US. I will not disappoint Greece,” Guilfoyle added.
Since then, invites have streamed in – up to 300 a day, one diplomat confided. Would-be suitors may perhaps be enthused by Guilfoyle’s joke that while she is in Athens she may also “work on getting a new husband”. (She was previously married to Gavin Newsom, now the governor of California, and the businessman Eric Villency.)
A former minister told the Guardian he had been astounded to see male MPs tripping over themselves to shake Guilfoyle’s hand when she made her first visit to the Greek parliament. “It was, frankly, embarrassing,” they said.
But while Guilfoyle’s direct connection to Trump’s inner circle may be useful, her actions have alarmed some. The new ambassador has not shied from crossing diplomatic red lines. Barely a month into the job, the fierce Trump loyalist openly raised concerns over the “unfortunate” extent of China’s influence in Athens’ port of Piraeus.
“She is shrewd, but also very blunt and as undiplomatic as Trump,” a businessman who has watched Guilfoyle in action said. “Her approach is very transactional.”
The US president’s good relations with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have also created concern that Guilfoyle’s enthusiasm could extend to rapprochement with Turkey, a prospect raised publicly by Tom Barrack, the US ambassador to Ankara.
“We wouldn’t be surprised if there was a ‘hot incident’ in the Aegean allowing the two ambassadors to step in and ‘fix’ relations between two squabbling Nato members,” said a source. “It sounds crazy – but doesn’t Trump want the Nobel peace prize?”
