Secretary of State Pompeo with Ambassador Dian Triansyah Djani of Indonesia, president of the Security Council for August, at the UN in New York City, Aug. 20, 2020. Pompeo delivered a letter to trigger a 30-day process that could reimpose UN sanctions on Iran. RON PRZYSUCHA/STATE DEPARTMENT
In New York City at the UN, Ambassador Kelly Craft with Talal Alhaj of Al Arabiya TV, Aug. 11, 2020, discussing the US effort to extend the Iran arms ban. Craft tweeted: “Allowing Iran to gain access to new, more powerful weapons would only fuel new terror, chaos & bloodshed in the region & beyond. The choice for the UNSC should be obvious.”
While Secretary-General António Guterres held a virtual press briefing on June 25, his spokesperson, Stéphane Dujarric, above, moderated. Guterres spoke about the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Charter and the relentless devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic. MANUEL ELIAS/UN PHOTO
Kelly Craft, the United States ambassador to the UN and previously US envoy to Canada, with her husband, Joseph Craft III, at a reception in Ottawa, Oct. 15, 2018. The value of Joseph Craft’s holdings in his energy company has dropped by more than $300 million in the last year. US EMBASSY CANADA
President Trump and US ambassador to the UN, Kelly Craft, speaking at an event on religious freedom, Sept. 23, 2019, UN headquarters. A few weeks ago in an interview with Fox News, Craft refused to blame China for the pandemic. She has since reversed course. TIA DUFOUR/WHITE HOUSE
What a difference a few weeks can make.
At the end of March, Kelly Craft, President Trump’s top ambassador at the United Nations, insisted that midbattle against a dread disease sweeping the globe was no time for an international blame game.
Kelly Craft, speaking to reporters outside the UN Security Council, Jan. 6, 2020. The US ambassador to the UN appeared on Fox News on March 29 but refused to take the bait from a network correspondent and blame China for the pandemic. USUN
President Trump and Secretary of State Michael Pompeo love to label Covid-19 as the “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus.”
US Ambassador Kelly Craft voting in the UN Security Council on a women, peace and security resolution, Oct. 29, 2019. She and her husband, the coal billionaire Joseph Craft, have donated money recently to a political action committee dedicated to re-electing Trump.
Kelly Craft has taken a big step toward helping to ensure her political future, lavishing a campaign contribution of $360,600 on the re-election of her boss, President Donald Trump.
Susan Rice, US envoy to the UN from 2009 to 2013, with some of her fellow ambassadors, clockwise from left: Peter Wittig of Germany; Mark Lyall Grant of Britain; Li Baodong of China; Vitaly Churkin of Russia; and Gérard Araud of France, June 9, 2010. A study by a German scholar of US ambassadors to the UN reveals four styles, he writes: unilateralist, moderate unilateralist, moderate multilateralist and multilateralist. EVAN SCHNEIDER/UN PHOTO
Jonathan Moore, the new head of International Organization Affairs, a US State Department bureau that works closely with the US mission to the UN.
The naming of Jonathan Moore, a senior United States Foreign Service officer, to the position of Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, signals that in the United Nations’ 75th year, the Trump administration is getting serious.
Kelly Knight Craft, the US envoy to Canada, has been nominated by President Trump to be the next US representative to the UN. Here, she celebrates the Fourth of July in Ottawa with her husband, Joseph Craft III, a billionaire coal investor. The couple’s coal wealth could present a conflict of interest for Kelly Craft at the UN, where climate change is a major thrust of its work.
It’s easy to figure out why Donald Trump picked Kelly Knight Craft to be his ambassador to the United Nations.
