On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal did a deep dive into the tenure of Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Germany, who has become known for his “very Trumpian” style of confronting foreign leaders and raging on social media.
Grenell, according to one White House official, has “made more enemies than friends, both inside and outside of Germany” with this attitude.
One of the primary reasons German officials are angry with Grenell is an interview he gave to Breitbart, in which he said he wanted to “empower” far-right forces to topple incumbent European governments — a massive breach of decorum for an ambassador.
An adviser to the Trump campaign who has had the president’s ear for a long time, Grenell has been the face of many of Trump’s priorities in Central Europe, including the obstruction of cash transfers from Germany to the government of Iran amid the effort to sabotage the nuclear agreement, a subsidized liquefied natural gas terminal to improve U.S. exports, the opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, and demands that other NATO companies expedite their funding obligations.
On the former two points, Grenell has had some success, but on the latter not so much.
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