Donald Trump remakes American diplomacy in Florida's image

Miami Herald

16-07-2025

From Panama to Singapore, President Donald Trump is deploying an unprecedented number of Floridians to represent the United States as he transforms the country's approach to diplomacy.
One out of every three nominees to ambassador-level positions in the Trump administration hails from the president's adopted home state of Florida, a higher percentage than any other state has produced in the past two decades.
The nation's top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is also from Florida.
'Clearly, Florida is the political epicenter of Trump world,' said Mauricio Claver-Carone, who recently left his role in the administration as the U.S. State Department's special envoy to Latin America and served in numerous roles in the first Trump administration.
The nominations — highly coveted positions given to top supporters in any administration — come as the president has deprioritized career diplomats, radically remaking the country's foreign policy apparatus. The administration has shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, which annually gave billions in foreign aid, and fired more than a thousand U.S. State Department employees last week.
Political nominees are often posted to friendly Western allies with little chance of major conflict, while career foreign service officers are often given the most sensitive assignments.
This time around, the White House has so far only nominated three career foreign service officers to serve as an ambassador — far less at this point than any administration in the past 25 years — and Florida nominees, who have varying levels of experience, have been tasked with some of the most delicate appointments, including Panama, Mexico and Colombia.
The list of Florida nominees features a mix of top campaign donors, Mar-a-Lago regulars and personal friends of the president including:
South Florida healthcare entrepreneurs and top donors Benjamín León Jr., who gave $3 million to political committees supporting Trump last year, and Peter Lamelas, who gave more than $700,000 to Pro-Trump committees last year and another $250,000 to Trump's inaugural committee. Leon was tapped to be the ambassador in Spain and Andorra and Lamelas is the pick to represent the country in Argentina.
Windermere trial lawyer Dan Newlin, who gave more than $5 million to pro-Trump committees during the 2024 election and $1 million to the inaugural fund, is Trump's choice to be the ambassador to Colombia.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-girlfriend and a former Fox News host, is the pick to represent the country in Greece.
Michael Waltz, Trump's former national security adviser and a former Florida congressman, was nominated to be the ambassador to the United Nations
Kevin Cabrera, a former Trump campaign staffer and Miami-Dade county commissioner, who successfully pushed for a street in Hialeah to be renamed 'President Donald J. Trump Avenue,' was nominated to be the ambassador to Panama.
Trump's personal friends and golfing partners John Arrigo, a West Palm Beach car dealer, and Michel Issa, a Highland Beach investor, who were tapped to be ambassadors to Portugal and Lebanon, respectively.
While many of the nominees have lived in Florida for decades, others are more recent arrivals drawn to the state because of Trump, said Yehuda Kaploun, the Miami-based founder of the Florida Orthodox Jewish Association and Trump's pick to be special envoy to monitor and combat anti-semitism.
'A lot of people have moved to Florida,' he said.
'You've not even done your homework'
With the Senate under Republican control, Trump has prioritized moving ambassador nominees through the confirmation process as quickly as possible.
'They're going along as rapidly as the system can go along. We're ahead of, I guess, anyone else thus far,' Trump said in March at a gathering at the White House with several of his ambassador nominees.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is tasked with vetting nominees before they go to the Senate floor for a full confirmation vote.
In March, Democrat Brian Schatz of Hawaii put a hold on nominees reaching the Senate floor in protest of the shuttering of USAID, but it hasn't stopped the progress of nominees and several have already been confirmed through a process called cloture, which allows these votes to advance with a majority vote.
Democrats have voiced their disapproval of several Florida nominees, but there's little else they can do to block their nominations.
On Tuesday, Waltz faced tough questions about his participation in a group chat on the encrypted messaging platform Signal while he was national security adviser in which details of upcoming military strikes were shared with a journalist from The Atlantic.
'We both know Signal is not a secure way to convey classified information,' said Democrat Sen. Chris Coons, of Delaware. 'And I was hoping to hear from you that you had some sense of regret over sharing what was very sensitive, timely information about a military strike on a commercially available app that's not, as we both know, the appropriate way to share such critical information.'
Waltz denied that any classified information was shared by the group and said that the government recommended that some government officials use encrypted messaging tools like Signal.
Last week, Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat, chided Anjani Sinha, the nominee to be ambassador to Singapore, for his lack of knowledge about the country.
'You've not even done your homework, sir,' Duckworth said.
She said that the position was 'not a glamour posting' because of the country's strategic importance in the U.S. relationship with China. Duckworth said she had hoped the White House would nominate a career foreign service officer to fill the role rather than Sinha, a retired orthopedic surgeon living in West Palm Beach described by South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham as a 'a friend of President Trump for over a decade.'
Democrats boycotted a May 8 hearing to protest what ranking Democrat Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, of New Hampshire, characterized as a break from the committee's 'long-standing rules and traditions' calling for bipartisan coordination.
But the boycott wound up smoothing the path for a controversial Florida nominee.
Lee Rizzuto, a former executive at the beauty accessories company Conair, was blocked from becoming an ambassador during the first Trump administration by the Republican-controlled Senate Foreign Relations Committee over concerns that the Boca Raton businessman had spread conspiracy theories. He was later appointed to lead the U.S. Consulate General in Bermuda, which didn't require Senate confirmation.
This time around, there were no Democrats present to question Rizzuto about his nomination to be the ambassador to the Organization of American States.
'That's good news for you, because sometimes these can get a little testy,' the committee's Republican Chair Sen. James Risch said to Rizzuto and his fellow nominees at the May hearing. 'But obviously that won't happen this morning.'
Sen. Shaheen objected to Rizzuto's nomination when it came up for a vote a week later, saying that Rizzuto 'has been willing to share unfounded conspiracy theories online to attack members of Congress, including members of this committee.'
But Rizzuto's nomination was approved by a party line vote.
'A lot of gravitas'
The United States is unique among Western countries for the number of political appointees who are appointed to be ambassadors.
'These are extraordinarily plum positions and are highly sought after,' said Rufus Gifford, a political appointee to two ambassador-level roles — chief of protocol in the Biden Administration and ambassador to Denmark in the Obama administration.
Over the past 50 years, presidents have typically drawn about two-thirds of their ambassador nominees from the ranks of career foreign service officers, while roughly one-third have been political appointees, according to data from the American Foreign Service Association.
That the White House has only nominated three career appointee is a major shift from prior administrations.
'I hope to see a stronger commitment to advancing qualified career foreign service officers who bring deep experience to our diplomatic corps,' Shaheen said.
The White House and State Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Research suggests that on average there aren't huge differences in performance between career appointees and political appointees, but that there is greater variation among political ambassadors, who come from a wide range of backgrounds.
'With career ambassadors in hand, you expect more of a steady hand, more predictability,' said Matt Malis, a political science professor at Texas A&M University.
Veteran diplomats say that the specialized training and experience that foreign service officers receive is essential for leading politically sensitive embassies.
'In foreign policy, you have to know the nuances or you're going to get taken to lunch,' said Harry Thomas, a career foreign service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to Bangladesh, the Philippines and Zimbabwe.
Gifford said that he learned a 'tremendous amount' from his interactions with career appointees and that it is important for political appointees to adopt an apolitical mindset when becoming ambassadors.
'Government service is a different animal,' he said. 'You're not representing MAGA, you are representing every single American.'
Political appointees do bring one big advantage over career ambassadors: their connection to the president.
'What distinguishes them from the foreign service is that some of them can pick up the phone and call Trump. That's usually not likely to happen to a career nominee,' said Tom Yazdgerdi, the outgoing president of the American Foreign Service Association and a former foreign service officer.
Claver-Carone said that many foreign countries, particularly in Latin America, tend to take ambassadors more seriously if they have a close connection to the president.
'I think that that adds a lot of gravitas,' he said.
But that loyalty to the president can come at a cost, said Mark Feierstein, a political appointee in multiple Democratic administrations, most recently as a top official at the United States Agency for International Development during the Biden Administration.
'You want people to feel free to push back. That's not what's happening now,' he said.
The small number of career nominees, combined with the dismantling of USAID and cuts to the State Department, has Yazdgerdi concerned about what it could mean for the future pipeline of foreign service officers.
'Many people strive to be an ambassador, that's the pinnacle of a career,' he said. 'If that's really cut off, that demoralizes people. That's just one more thing that makes a career in the foreign service less attractive.'
But Claver-Carone said that with a 'big pool' of potential candidates, he doesn't expect the administration to stop appointing political nominees anytime soon.
What's more, he said, the range of countries where political appointees are jockeying to serve is greater than in past administrations, with Floridians, in particular, interested in a wider range of countries in Latin America.
'I don't recall seeing people fighting to become the ambassador to El Salvador,' he said.
The most recent nomination hearings reflect Florida's continued overrepresentation in the nominee pool.
Two out of three ambassador nominees at a hearing Tuesday hailed from Florida, and three of the five nominees at a hearing last week were also from Florida.
At last week's hearing, Florida Republican Sen. Ashley Moody was on hand to introduce Jennifer Locetta, the former executive director of the Florida Republican Party and Trump's pick to serve in an ambassador-level role at the United Nations.
'This is just another great Floridian volunteering her time and coming up to DC to serve her country,' Moody said of Locetta. 'I'm thrilled that many great Floridians have volunteered to serve and have been nominated by this administration to carry out President Trump's vision for this country.'