Trump’s choice on a replacement UN ambassador is complex

Maybe the surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump yanked Elise Stefanik’s nomination to become ambassador to the United Nations. It’s that he hasn’t pulled America out of the organization. But perhaps that outcome is in the offing as Trump ponders whether he should select anyone to succeed her abortive nomination.

Trump decided to leave Stefanik in Congress because of the slender Republican majority in the House – 218-213, plus four vacancies. “I have asked Elise, as one of my biggest Allies, to remain in Congress to help me deliver Historic Tax Cuts, GREAT Jobs, Record Economic Growth, a Secure Border, Energy Dominance, Peace Through Strength, and much more, so we can MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “With a very tight Majority, I don’t want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise’s seat. The people love Elise and, with her, we have nothing to worry about come Election Day.”

How much she can do to promote his legislative agenda is an open question. Myriad hurdles loom. Republicans are feuding about how to extend the 2017 tax cuts, mostly aimed at upper brackets. Add in the new tariffs, which are likely to increase inflation and a lack of demand for treasury bills from abroad, and you have a recipe for economic trouble, if not disaster. 

It’s also telling that Trump acknowledges that he’s apprehensive about the prospect of “anyone else” running for Stefanik’s seat. Anyone else, in other words, might end up winning it, thereby further shrinking the GOP majority. In fact, the Democrats have just won a State Senate race in Lancaster County, where James Malone defeated Josh Parsons by 482 votes. In November the county backed Trump by 15 points. Perhaps this insalubrious result weighed on Trump’s mind as much as anything weighs on it.

For Stefanik, her forfeiture of the UN post is a bitter pill to swallow indeed. The post has been a launching pad for numerous politicians ranging from Daniel Patrick Moynihan to Madeleine Albright to Nikki Haley. She clearly has larger ambitions than remaining in Congress. For now, she will have to content herself with having toppled a few hapless college presidents. 

Meanwhile, Trump will have to decide if he wants a fresh pick. Perhaps he will exile his beleaguered National Security Advisor Michael Waltz to Turtle Bay as punishment for the Signal debacle. Or he might send Steve Bannon, who is at the head of the anti-globalist vanguard. There is precedent for it. 

In the summer of 1973, as Sam Tanenhaus reminds us in a forthcoming biography of William F. Buckley, Jr., Richard M. Nixon appointed him as an American delegate to the UN. The loquaciously polysyllabic Buckley was a fierce critic of it. Bannon is hardly likely to cut a less colorful figure at an organization he reviles. Would he even don a tie?