United States embassies across Europe were not planning to party on election night. Staffers headed home instead of gathering around the television at work, swapping stories and sharing libations as they have in elections past.
With a victory by former President Donald Trump increasingly likely and predicted the diplomatic establishment is seeing 2016 all over again when Trump soundly defeated Hillary Clinton and promised to drain the swamp and defeat the Deep State in Washington.
“I don’t think there was appetite to watch another Trump victory,” a senior European diplomat told Politico, explaining that Trump’s win in 2016 had “calamitous” effects on the party mood. Former US Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power remembered in her autobiography that she invited all the female UN ambassadors to a private election night party in anticipation of Clinton becoming the first female president and watching it all collapse. It doesn’t look like it’s Vice President Kamala Harris’ year either.
For an American diplomatic world that leaned heavily towards the Democrats in 2016 as it does now, a Trump victory was, and is, seen as a right-wing populist backlash to be feared, not applauded.
The embassy titans are not staying up late Tuesday night to be disappointed by Trump’s reelection or seen sobbing with a Martini. Only the US Embassy in Rome has planned for a party. If the blatant ideological bias of the ambassadors and their staff seems surprising, even outrageous, it’s because of the prevalence of political patronage in the diplomatic corps and due to President Joe Biden having appointed so many to their current jobs, Politico noted. […]
— Read More: humanevents.com