US President-elect Donald Trump has nominated House of Representatives member Elise Stefanik to become the permanent US representative to the United Nations.
The congresswoman from New York, the fourth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, has been a staunch ally of the president-elect and a major fundraiser for the Republican Party. Stefanik, 40, has supported Trump during a difficult period of criminal cases against him and fits the president-elect’s vision of hiring loyalists to work in the White House. Trump, 78, said in a statement to The New York Post:
I am honored to nominate Chairwoman Elise Stefanik to serve in my Cabinet as US Ambassador to the United Nations. Elise is an incredibly strong, tough, and smart America First fighter.
Confirming her acceptance of the role, Stefanik told the newspaper she was “honoured” to be nominated and called rising anti-Semitism a problem that needed to be addressed. Stefanik told the Post:
The work ahead is immense as we see antisemitism skyrocketing coupled with four years of catastrophically weak US leadership that significantly weakened our national security and diminished our standing in the eyes of both allies and adversaries.
Stefanik’s tough questioning last year was part of a series of events that eventually led to the departure of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who responded by refusing to her question about whether they would condemn calls for “the genocide of Jews.”
The issue of aid to Israel
Earlier this year, at a meeting of the Jewish and Pro-Israeli Student Caucus in the Knesset, she condemned US President Joe Biden’s decision to suspend the delivery of thousands of bombs to Israel, warning that if Israel did not get the weapons needed to “achieve total victory,” America could face its own October 7.
But the New York State Republican also drew condemnation for comments echoing the supremacist “great replacement theory,” which in its original form claims that Jews are orchestrating mass immigration of people of colour into Western countries to replace white populations. In 2021, Stefanik’s campaign posted on social media that Democrats plan to “overthrow our current electorate” by allowing illegal immigrants into the country.
And leading Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin said last year that Stefanik allowed anti-Semitism in her party when she “didn’t utter a word of protest” after Trump had dinner with Kanye West, a rapper who professes anti-Semitism, and Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier.
On Saturday, Trump said he “will not invite back” Nikki Haley, who served as UN ambassador during his first administration and then ran against him for the Republican Party. He also said his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would not be part of his next administration.
