Anchor for the U.N.
The nomination of the Fox News anchor Heather Nauert as the next U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations can only mean that there are powerful people behind the scenes who want to use her as a front and run U.S. foreign policy without any interference.
UNITED STATES PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP makes no secret of the fact that his favourite television show is “Fox & Friends”, an early morning programme on Fox News Network. Starting in 2001, the show had a rocky few years before it became the conservative heartbeat during the administration of Barack Obama. The election of Obama in 2008 came at the same time as the financial crisis. The combination of the two—the election of an African-american man and the attrition of middleclass wealth—was the fire starter for the Tea Party movement. The Tea Party gathered together old-fashioned racists and those frustrated by the outsourcing of their jobs and the collapse of the value of their homes. They would turn, each morning, to Fox News to listen to “Fox & Friends”, which had no filter and no fealty to the truth. Trump was, and is, one of the most loyal listeners of this unhinged programme.
The format of the show is simple: three anchors banter and then the anchors entertain guests. The conversation is snappy, the concern for truth irrelevant. One of the anchors for the show was Heather Nauert, who had started her career as a business reporter. Heather Nauert, who has now been nominated as the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has not had any experience in reporting from outside the U.S. Her foreign policy credentials are irrelevant. What gave her the office was her post at Fox News as the anchor of Trump’s favourite show. It is what brought her to Washington, D.C., with Trump and what sends her back to New York now as one of the most visible U.S. government employees.
Trump was not only a fan of Heather Nauert’s television show; he had a regular segment on it. Once a week, Trump would phone in and chat with the anchors about his thoughts. It was a rambling segment, with Trump fulminating about the latest conspiracy theories, ideas cascading inside his head that he felt emboldened to share with millions of viewers. Whatever Trump wanted to say, he said it: for instance, that Obama was not born in the U.S., that Robert De Niro was not the “brightest bulb on the planet”, and that he—trump—was not a racist. No one questioned him. Trump’s phone calls to Fox & Friends have not ended. He recently called in to give his own presidency “an A-plus. Nobody has done what I’ve been able to do,” he said.