Politics and Money

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Excellent. Donors to the Trump inaugural committee got ambassador nominations. But are they qualified?

This article though dated contains some relevant tidbits.

"Trump's picks are less qualified than prior presidents'," said a law professor at Marquette who has looked at the qualifications of nearly 2,000 nominees.

VIDEO - New questions over Trump's picks for ambassadorships
April 4, 2019 01:40

April 3, 2019, 7:30 PM AEDT
By Emily R. Siegel, Andrew W. Lehren, Brandy Zadrozny, Dan De Luce and Vanessa Swales

When President Donald Trump's pick for ambassador to the Bahamas testified before Congress to make the case for his nomination, he incorrectly stated that the island nation was part of the U.S. It is an independent country.

For ambassador to the United Arab Emirates — a job so sensitive in the tense Middle East that every previous president gave it to a career diplomat — Trump picked a wealthy real estate developer with no diplomatic experience.

[...]

Since the 1950s, roughly two-thirds of confirmed ambassadors have been career foreign service officials and one-third have been political appointees. Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush kept within that range, according to the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA), which is comprised of current and former diplomats.

The Trump administration is different. Of its confirmed appointees, around 50 percent are career foreign service diplomats, and 50 percent are political appointees, according to AFSA.

[...]

The rate of confirmation is also quite different for Trump nominees. Two years into their presidencies, Presidents Bill Clinton, Bush and Obama had 96, 84 and 89 percent of their nominees confirmed. Trump is currently at 66 percent, according to a senior congressional staffer.

Why the lag in confirmations? R. Nicholas Burns, a former ambassador under Clinton and Bush and a former undersecretary of state under Bush, points out that the Trump administration was unusually slow to submit nominations.

[...]

"What I don't know is if some of these people are being held up by the Democrats," said Burns. "That sometimes happens."

Marquette University law professor Ryan Scoville, who is about to publish a study analyzing the qualifications of nearly 2,000 ambassador nominees from the Reagan era onward, was less equivocal. "Trump's picks are less qualified than prior presidents'," said Scoville, though Trump is continuing a downward trend in which "the level of qualification has eroded while the amount of contribution to candidates has risen."

[...]

Then there are the Blanchards.

John Blanchard, a Montgomery, Alabama, real estate magnate, donated $553,500 to Trump's inauguration fund under the name Joe D. Blanchard. He and his wife, Lynda "Lindy" Blanchard, have given more than $2.6 million to Republicans since 2015.

In January 2018, the Blanchards collectively donated $250,000 to the Trump Victory Political Action Committee, a joint-fundraising effort by Trump's re-election campaign and the Republican National Committee. The couple also wrote four separate checks for $2,700 to Trump's re-election campaign on the same day, the maximum permitted for individual contributions.

Five months later, in June 2018, Trump nominated Lynda Blanchard to become ambassador to Slovenia.

Lynda Blanchard, who founded and ran a charity called the 100X Development Foundation, dedicated to helping children and the poor, was an early Trump supporter who often shared stories on her Facebook wall that praised the future president.

"May God our Father paint this country Red with the Blood of Jesus!" she posted on Election Day 2016.

Many articles she shared on her Facebook page in 2016 were from now-defunct sites that peddled false stories about Democratic politicians. She shared a link to an article titled, "The Clinton 'Body Count' EXPANDS – 5 Mysterious DEATHS in the Last 6 Weeks," pushing a baseless decades-old conspiracy theory that alleges Bill and Hillary Clinton murdered former friends and enemies.

She shared "WATCH: Jaws Drop When Lib CNN Host Betrays Hillary With Shock Message on Live TV," an article which has since been taken down from the far-right Conservative Tribune, a website known for false news, for failing to meet its "editorial standards."

An article from "Conservative Outfitters" carried the headline, "Hillary caught on camera breaking North Carolina election laws?" In the post, Blanchard asked, "Did this really happen????"

In September, the Foreign Relations Committee approved Blanchard's nomination. After the session ended in January, all pending nominations were brought back to the president. Trump then resubmitted her nomination...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/donors-trump-inaugural-committee-got-ambassador-nominations-are-they-qualified-n990116