Trump ally gets familiar 'consolation prize' after 'badly flawed' plans implode

Kari Lake at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 24, 2024 (Lev Radin/ Shutterstock.com)

President Donald Trump had big plans for outspoken MAGA ally Kari Lake, but with those plans having thoroughly imploded, a new MS NOW analysis explained how she has been given a familiar "consolation prize."

Lake first emerged as a news anchor in Phoenix, Arizona, before making the jump to politics as an avowed supporter of Trump and the MAGA movement. Despite high hopes for her as a future star for the Republican Party, the transition largely flopped, as she lost the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race to Democrat Katie Hobbs and the 2024 Senate race to Democrat Ruben Gallego.

With no actual electoral success to her name, Trump attempted to install her as the next director for Voice of America, the international broadcaster funded by the U.S. government, amid plans to gut the institution and reshape it into a more right-wing form with the help of One America News. This effort, too, fell flat after a judge ruled that she was ineligible to serve at the head of VOA, invalidating her tenure and reversing the mass layoffs she had overseen.

In the wake of all that failure, Trump on Monday nominated Lake to serve as the new ambassador to Jamaica, echoing an emerging pattern of the president placing close allies in key diplomatic roles.

"President Trump on Monday appointed Kari Lake, a fierce ally of the president who had led the administration’s efforts to shutter Voice of America and other federally funded news groups, as the next ambassador to Jamaica," the New York Times reported this week. "Her appointment, if confirmed by the Senate, would end her tumultuous time at the parent agency for federally funded news groups that broadcast to countries with limited press freedom, such as China, Russia and Iran."

Writing about the development on Tuesday, Steve Benen, a longtime contributor and producer for MS NOW, wrote that the appointment of Lake fit a growing pattern from the administration and its handling of MAGA allies with failed political ambitions.

"Lake’s nomination coincided with the president also tapping Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano — another prominent Republican election denier who launched a gubernatorial campaign that failed — to serve as U.S. ambassador to Slovakia," Benen wrote. "The far-right state senator will also need to be confirmed by the Republican-led Senate. Time will tell when and whether Lake and Mastriano receive the support they’ll need on Capitol Hill, but their nominations are emblematic of a larger pattern: The White House sure does like to hand out ambassadorships to those whose earlier political plans didn’t quite work out."

Benen further detailed the various names who received a similar parachute from Trump: Mike Waltz was named U.N. ambassador after being ousted as White House national security adviser; former GOP Rep. Billy Long went from an "incredibly short tenure" leading the IRS to serving as ambassador to Iceland; and, John Giordano went from a failed interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey to serving as the ambassador to Namibia.

"Even Kristi Noem, after her many failures as the head of the Department of Homeland Security, made the transition to a diplomatic role as 'special envoy' to the Shield of the Americas, a poorly defined security initiative for the Western Hemisphere," Benen concluded. "As an Associated Press report summarized last year, 'Diplomacy may be soft power, but in President Donald Trump’s administration, it’s also lately a soft landing.'"

From Your Site Articles