WILMINGTON, Del. – To build trust, bridge disagreements and find common ground during the 35 years she served as a foreign service officer on four continents, Linda Thomas-Greenfield turned to cooking. President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations grew up as an African American amid the suffocating segregation in Louisiana. The eldest of eight, her dad could neither read nor write. She was the first in her family to graduate from high school, let alone go to college. Future Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke was a classmate at Louisiana State University. As a diplomat in Switzerland, Pakistan, Kenya, Gambia, Nigeria, Jamaica and Liberia, Thomas-Greenfield taught a lot of foreigners how to make gumbo. She would invite her local counterparts over to the American embassy show them how to make a roux. They would chop onions to go with the celery and green peppers that make up the holy trinity. “I put a Cajun spin on it. I called it ‘gumbo diplomacy,” the 68-year-old said here Tuesday after Biden introduced her and five other members of his national security team. “It was my way of breaking down barriers, connecting with people and starting to see each other on a human level. A bit of lagniappe is what we say in Louisiana!” Biden said he came to admire Thomas-Greenfield when he was vice president and she was the top State Department official in charge of Africa policy during the Ebola outbreak. He announced that he will give her Cabinet-level status to make sure she has a voice in all major foreign policy discussions. The current U.N. ambassador, Kelly Craft, is not a member of President Trump’s Cabinet. Nor is she a career diplomat. She is a GOP megadonor who is married to a billionaire coal baron, her third husband. She also happens to be friends with Elaine Chao, Trump’s Transportation secretary and the wife of the Senate majority leader, someone she has also contributed generously to over the years. Talk about a contrast. LTG – as she is known at Foggy Bottom – was part of the mass exodus of career diplomats who left the State Department during the Trump era. Speaking at the Queen theater here, she declared that she wanted to send a message to diplomats around the world who have been marginalized, disparaged and otherwise dispirited over the past years. “America is back,” she said. “Multilateralism is back. Diplomacy is back.” This comment angered Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who attacked her on Fox News. “I couldn’t tell exactly from her statement,” he said, “but multilateralism for the sake of hanging out with your buddies at a cool cocktail party? That’s not in the best interest of the United States of America.” Pompeo, whose mishandling of the Ukraine imbroglio deeply soured his relationship with the foreign service, said the Trump administration has developed “coalitions that actually deliver real results and reflect the reality on the ground.” “I know some of these folks,” Pompeo told Bret Baier of Biden’s picks. “They took a very different view. They lived in a bit of a fantasy world. They led from behind. They appeased. I hope they will choose a different course.” As ballots continue to be counted, Biden’s vote total has just crossed 80 million. This is 10 million more votes than the previous record set by Barack Obama – and him – in 2008. All six of Biden’s first round of nominees worked for the Obama administration. NBC’s Lester Holt asked the president-elect during an interview that aired morning on the “Today” show what he says to people wondering if he is trying to create a third Obama term. “This is not a third Obama term because we face a totally different world than we faced in the Obama-Biden administration,” he replied. “President Trump has changed the landscape. It's become America first. It's been America alone.”  President-elect Joe Biden listens as his nominees speak on Tuesday at the Queen theater in Wilmington, Del. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post) |
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