
Gay Trump toady Ric Grenell is scheming his way back into the White House, according to reports, with the fired gay Kennedy Center president’s sights set on Moscow.
Grenell is “floating his interest” in becoming the next U.S. ambassador to Russia, say two sources quoted by The Daily Mail.
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“He had an interest in the job — or at least he floated the idea to select colleagues,” said one.
The job — vacant since Biden envoy Lynne Tracy left the job almost a year ago — would be a stretch for Grenell, who served as the gay former ambassador to Germany and Director of National Intelligence in the last, chaotic days of the first Trump administration.
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Also, Russian President Vladimir Putin loathes gay people.
“Putin’s regime is extremely anti–LGBTQ, so I’m sure they didn’t take that thought too seriously,” said the source, commenting on the Trump administration’s reaction to Grenell’s lobbying for the job.
“That would never happen anyway,” they said.
One called Grenell’s jockeying for the job “embarrassing.”
After Trump tapped Marco Rubio for secretary of state — a post Grenell thought he was in the running for without evidence — and handed Grenell the consolation prize of running the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the former diplomat has been angling to get back on the international stage ever since.
Politico reported Grenell was so eager for the top spot at the State Department that he may have paid right-wing influencers to plug him for the Foggy Bottom post.
Grenell did convince Trump to name him “envoy of special missions,” in addition to his Kennedy Center post, but soon enough, he was earning the contempt of real diplomats who said his “freelancing” was damaging U.S. diplomatic negotiations and threatening national security.
Sources laid blame for the collapse of two deals in Venezuela last year, including a prisoner exchange, at Grenell’s feet.
At last year’s Munich Security Conference, two attendees likened Grenell’s behavior at a Ukraine event to a “commissar” hovering over the now-former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, policing his language to ensure the “right things were said.”
They called it “an embarrassing look” and an obvious, inappropriate audition.
“Everybody speculating at the conference thought he’s just waiting for Rubio to fail so he can take that job,” one diplomat told The Daily Mail. “There were even rumors he’d become national security advisor,” one said. Grenell was passed over for that position, too; Rubio holds both titles.
In addition to the disastrous job Grenell did on his Kennedy Center watch — which saw plunging ticket sales, a massive artists’ exodus, and the U.S. Senate investigating Grenell over charges of corruption — Grenell’s last stint as an ambassador was also a failure.
His run as Ambassador to Germany from 2017-2020 was marked with what could charitably be called distaste by his hosts. Out of the gate, Grenell advertised his own desire to “empower” right -wing governments across Europe.
Grenell praised the rise Austria’s far-right conservative Chancellor Sebastian Kurz as a “rock star,” apparently ignorant of the historic implications that a popular xenophobic right-wing Austrian might have for Germans.
The German newspaper Der Spiegel spoke with 30 well-placed diplomats about Grenell and summed up their collective review of his ambassadorship like this: “A majority of them describe Grenell as a vain, narcissistic person who dishes out aggressively, but can barely handle criticism. His brash demeanor, some claim, hides a deep insecurity, and they say he thirsts for the approval of others.”
Grenell knew little about Germany and Europe, they said, and his “knowledge of the subject matter is superficial.”
Added veteran foreign policy advisor Susan Hennessey, senior fellow in national security at the Brookings Institution, Grenell is “utterly incompetent.”
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