Opinion | Daniel B. Shapiro: 'Foreign officials now understand that American ambassadors and lower-ranking diplomats may have little of value to offer.' - NBCNewsTHINK
But it is not just the Cabinet-level officials whose standing suffers when the president surrounds himself with his children. Presumably they knew, or should have known, more or less what they were getting into when they hitched their wagon to Trump. More serious is that it undermines an entire strata of U.S. government professionals with knowledge and experience in foreign countries, languages, and ways to advance U.S. interests on whom we depend to conduct diplomacy with foreign governments.
The result is that the U.S. government is rapidly becoming perceived — abroad and at home — as a family business. If the only people who matter are the president’s relatives, we have strayed far from our traditions as a republic led by a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.
As the president prepares to run for re-election, the American people have a right to consider what the administration in his second term would look like. Most administrations that serve two terms tend to double down on their behavior in the first term. Released of the worries posed by a re-election campaign, they act more freely. If ethical standards have been breached in the first term, the floodgates tend to open in the second term.
What Trump and his daughter seemed to be doing on this recent Asia trip is providing hints about the future. The president has previously and president of the World Bank, but demurred while grousing that he would be accused of nepotism, which he clearly viewed as unjustified.
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