Trump’s Foreign ‘Envoy’ Is Ready to Sow International Chaos
Rick Grenell, a MAGA sycophant who’s courting strongmen and populists around the world for Donald Trump, can’t wait to run the State Department.
Rick Grenell, shadow secretary of state.
Photographer: Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg via Getty Images
All you need to know about geopolitics in 2024 is that America’s allies fear a second term for Donald Trump, while adversaries such as China and Russia are trying to get the former president re-elected with expansive disinformation campaigns. And yet, it’s not clear what either the fears of the friends or the hopes of the foes rest on, since nobody really knows what a Trump 2.0 foreign policy would look like.
So let’s brush up on Rick Grenell, Trump’s former ambassador to Germany, who’s been jetting around the world and hobnobbing with right-wing populists in an unofficial and bizarre role the Washington Post describes as shadow secretary of state. The Donald indeed calls Grenell “my envoy.”