Today's episode is presented by Real Deal. Real Deal is an EU-funded project where leading researchers and Europe's largest civil society organizations have issued recommendations to place people at the heart of the green and just transition. What do a fast food CEO, a convicted felon, a Broadway producer, and Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-girlfriend have in common? No, this isn't the setup for a bad joke.
It's the shortlist for Donald Trump's next batch of U.S. ambassadors to Europe. With Trump back in the White House, he's putting together his diplomatic lineup, selecting nominees for key posts. But foreign policy experience doesn't seem to be very high on the list of qualifications. Instead, he's turning to business executives, major donors, and fiercely loyal allies.
Take his nominee for ambassador to the EU, for example. Andrew Puzder is a hamburger mogul who recently published a book about how corporations should ditch their climate and diversity commitments. Of course. And while some of his picks stand out for being highly undiplomatic, others... including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are actually pretty, well, conventional. So who exactly are the key players in Washington's new delegation to Europe?
What do Trump's choices mean for the EU's place in his America First agenda? And will his envoys help hold the transatlantic relationship together? Or will they be, as one of our panelists put it, forces of destruction. I'm Sarah Wheaton, host of EU Confidential. In this episode, we'll discuss all the president's men and women who are likely on their way to US embassies across Europe.
Pending Senate confirmation, of course. For that, I'm joined by Nick Nijbiotek, Politico's labor reporter in Washington, D.C., as well as Ivo Dalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former U.S. ambassador to NATO. And here with me in the studio is someone whose voice will be familiar to longtime listeners to this podcast. We're welcoming back former EU confidential host Suzanne Lynch, now author of Politico's Global Playbook.
So yeah, we finally found out who Trump's pick to be his envoy to Brussels, to the EU institutions is. His name is Andrew Puzder. And Nick, people in Europe have never heard of this guy. Who is he? Yeah, so Andrew Puzder was a longtime executive at CKE Restaurants, which is a parent company for restaurant brands like fast food brands like Carl's Jr. and Artie's.
I don't know how well they're known abroad, but they are obviously not as well known as a McDonald's, which kind of has a global recognition, but they're in the same. rough vein of that. So you'd see him kind of along highways, in shopping centers that you'd go to in the US, things like that.
So it was recognizable. One of the things it was actually best known for was kind of a run of steamy commercials back in the early 2000s where they would kind of have like skately clad women or women in bikinis, what have you, kind of like. brushing up against cars or washing cars and then munching on hamburgers. I don't think there's anything wrong with a beautiful woman in a bikini eating a burger and washing a Bentley or a pickup truck or being in a hot tub.
That was kind of like one of their, I guess, successful kind of advertisements and one of the things that would actually kind of register in people's brains. But Andrew Puzder was President Donald Trump during his first term. He was the initial... picked to be labor secretary and kind of run a lot of workplace enforcement policies and regulations and things like that. But that actually kind of ran aground amid resurfaced allegations dating back to divorce proceedings he had years earlier.
Andy Puzder withdrew his nomination Wednesday following the emergence of devastating details surrounding spousal abuse allegations his ex-wife had levied against him. He had always denied it. And the woman who was involved was subsequently had kind of walked back or disavowed some of those saying that they were kind of a tactic that was raised by her divorce attorney at the time.
But they were enough to kind of get a lot of Republicans at the time kind of skittish about him. And so he ultimately pulled out and did not serve in the administration the last time around. I think that what you've captured there is one of the big differences over.
eight years is that, you know, when Trump was first elected, these types of allegations of domestic abuse could sink a nominee. But since then, I mean, Puzder has kind of made this anti-woke, anti... diversity, equity, and inclusion thing part of his brand, right?
I think it predated that. And that was one of the things that kind of brought him to Trump's attention the first time around, just kind of being a very conservative business voice and a voice for a certain type of how businesses should operate. But yes, he's stayed a very vocal. defender and supporter of President Trump. He worked for the America First Policy Institute, which kind of became kind of a think tank for...
former Trump people out in between when he left in 2021 and when he's come back. And so that kind of incubated a lot of people who are kind of now going into the second administration. But you're right, like taking a very firm tact against whether it be stakeholders. Holder capitalism or PEI or diversity practices or basically anything that just critics of this would kind of describe as very divorced from like core business principles of just trying to.
buy and sell things that interest people, that sort of argument and just kind of straying from those core business missions. So he definitely has kind of been on that train. And as you said, like the Republican senators seem to be. much more willing to go along with people who Donald Trump has picked this time around. And also the administration has definitely encouraged people to kind of like shrug off.
criticism or skepticism of them and their personal backgrounds. And we saw that to some extent with the defense secretary who was recently confirmed. who had various allegations about his treatment towards women and relationship to alcohol, that sort of thing. And he was ultimately confirmed. And so once that went through, there was the expectation that it's a pretty high bar to not expect someone to get confirmed and ultimately land.
the position they were picked for. And this will be probably a pretty good test case of that. Yeah. And I mean, we found some interesting quotes from Posder. He has a new book out. And apparently, when he was promoting that book, he basically said that companies like ExxonMobil and
have been adopting net zero carbon emissions policies, even though obviously they basically produce gas and oil. He said, It's because there really is a group of financial elites, people who run these large asset management firms in the world, who are out there forcing... Their radical leftist woke cultural agenda on America, on us. So, Suzanne, somebody with that kind of attitude, how do you see him potentially operating in a place like Brussels?
Well, look, I mean, one thing that our listeners here in Brussels, you know, may not be aware of is that it's a different system in the US. There are political appointees and that's the way it works. Now, that does sometimes happen on the European side, but not to the same extent as it does in the US.
So everybody puts in their person into the mission here in Brussels, and that's the way it goes. So these are highly politicized appointments. Now, they have a team of State Department officials who work there, doing a lot of supporting and very...
important work. But ultimately, the ambassador is a political appointee. So in that sense, they do what they say in the tin. It is not going to be surprising that these people will be a donor to the president, maybe, or a political allied president or both. So that's what we're expecting here in Brussels.
Now, it's happening at a time, obviously, when Trump is someone who's instinctively anti-EU. He will, we think, gravitate perhaps more to national capital. So it's going to be interesting for us about who he speaks to.
to when he speaks to Europe? Will he be really speaking to the EU or will he more be speaking to individual prime ministers in different countries, including those that he's ideologically aligned with, like George Maloney in Italy or Viktor Orban in Hungary? But look, the EU... and the US, whether Trump likes this or not, are very closely connected, have very strong trade links and this is going to be an important relationship.
either way for the next four years. Ivo, you're a former U.S. ambassador to NATO under a Democratic president. What's your sense of how much U.S. foreign policy actually... shifts from one president to the next, especially towards a multi-national institution, whether it's NATO or the European Union. So in normal times, it doesn't shift all that much. You know, the United States has a treaty with the now 31 other countries at NATO. In terms of the EU, it is a...
An outsider, it's not a member of the EU, of course, but by definition, the ambassador of the United States to the European Union is relating itself to multinational institutions, in this case, the EU. But these aren't normal times. Let's be very clear. The president of the United States came to office believing and have long for decades believed that sort of the rules-based...
post-war order, call it Pax Americana, call it whatever you want, was not serving America's interests. He believed that allies took the United States for being a sucker. He believed that international institutions and treaties were there to serve the purpose of the United States. And if they didn't, then you could just abandon them. And he already in his first term made very clear that when it came to the European Union...
He saw it as he called it at the time, as a foe, not as a friend. And that is going to continue in spades. Suzanne's right. that the likelihood is that the U.S. will look towards working with capitals rather than with the union. Politico has already reported in depth that Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, seems to be talking to every European except...
His counterpart, the high representative. He did finally have a call with Kayakalas earlier this week. He did. I'm glad he did. I'm glad he remembered that there's somebody like that. But I don't think there's going to be a lot of conversation that they're in. And remember, you know, if we all go back to the first term, who was Trump's EU ambassador? Mr. Sunblend, who spent his entire time trying to figure out how to undermine the Ukrainian government.
the Ukrainian government to work with them in order to undermine the Biden candidacy. And indeed, the president was impeached over that. That's not what an EU ambassador is supposed to do. He's supposed to be working with the EU on issues related to trade, to regulations.
to technology, which of course will be a huge issue under the Trump administration. I don't think that's why Mr. Puster has been sent here. He's been sent here to be the force of destruction that Donald Trump wants to send to Brussels. in order to disrupt, if not actually destroy, the capacity of the European Union to do what it would like to do.
Well, you know, there was there was a huge sigh of relief in Brussels when Joe Biden ended up defeating Donald Trump when Trump ran for reelection. But then I was just I was actually reminding myself and I saw that it took Biden several months. to nominate his ambassadors both to the European Union and to NATO, whereas Trump, you know, already has named these people. You know, does this mean that Trump does actually, in his own way, care about the EU?
I think the reason there is a difference is because in the Biden administration and Joe Biden himself was deeply involved in making the decisions. But there was such a thing called vetting. where you actually look at the people and figure out whether they have problems like divorce cases in which there were allegations of assault or taxes having been paid, et cetera, and the Biden administration.
was notoriously slow at going through the vetting process. So the fact that Mark Ginstein, by the way, an almost childhood friend of Joe Biden, and Julie Smith, who had served as deputy national security advisor to Joe Biden when he was was vice president, two people who Biden knew personally extraordinarily well, even so took months to get them nominated, let alone confirmed. Donald Trump doesn't believe in vetting, and to the extent that things exist that are disqualifying, he's probably...
done them himself. So it's unlikely to be a problem for him, as we saw with Pete Hexas, as Nick rightly said. We're unlikely to see that as an issue. It is in some ways surprising, however, that the two institutions... that he seems to be most disturbed about. NATO and the EU have gotten early nominees. In the NATO case, almost, I think, the second or third person to be nominated. Now, again, someone who...
Probably doesn't know what the acronym NATO stands for. Not someone who will be steeped in the details of NATO policymaking and NATO history. But nevertheless, somebody who was served as an acting attorney general for... for Trump in the first term and has been nominated. So we'll see.
what they will do when they actually arrive in Brussels. Yeah, and that NATO pick is Matt Whitaker. As we said, he worked in the Justice Department, chief of staff to Trump's first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and then he was an acting attorney general of himself. Ivo, you brought up a bunch of...
bunch of points that I want to look at more closely. But Suzanne, why don't I go to you? We were just talking about Mark Gittinstein, the outgoing EU ambassador from the US. You just interviewed him. What was kind of his perspective? on the EU-US relationship and how it will move forward. Yeah, I mean, it was interesting. Like all outgoing ambassadors, he, of course, said he couldn't comment on the incoming administration, but he was positive about the future of transit.
Atlantic relations. He pointed to figures like Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, Republican leader there, how they built strong transatlantic relationships and connected with both sides of the Atlantic and saying that it doesn't depend.
It shouldn't depend and doesn't depend on who is president or who is secretary of state at any particular point in time. Now, one could say, is that wishful thinking? Others would say, well, look, things were rocky in the first Trump administration between Brussels and Wales.
Washington. But you know what? It wasn't all rosy either between Biden and the EU during the Biden presidency. So, for example, trade tensions were there. There was a lot of frustration here with the Inflation Reduction Act. The Europeans got very caught off guard with that plan, that massive investment plan that Biden announced that was aimed at, you know, green policies but poured money into US industries. A lot of European partners weren't happy at that. So it wasn't all rosy.
So I suppose a positive sign would be, look, this is just, you know, one moment in a long relationship. However, you know, as we've just been hearing there, the reality is that Donald Trump is now back for a second term. He knows what he wants. He's more experienced and he's made his...
views clear on the EU. I think obviously defence is a huge issue now for the two sides but also trade and so far the Trump administration has said very little about the EU. We're expecting maybe tariffs on China and Canada.
as early as this weekend. Now, I've been speaking to people over the last few days who are saying maybe it's a good thing that he hasn't been thinking much about the EU yet, that we're not in the line of sight. But that will happen. And there is a deadline around the steel and aluminum tariffs coming up.
March, that's something that's looming. So he will turn his attention to Brussels soon. People just don't know what those actions are going to be. We need to take a quick break, but when we come back... we'll talk about why maybe it kind of made sense that Marco Rubio didn't make calling Kayakalas a priority. Stay with us. A message from Real Deal. Imagine bringing together top EU researchers focused on citizen participation and Europe's largest civil society groups.
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They've really dug into what works and what doesn't in involving citizens in decisions that impact our environment, like ensuring our cities have cleaner air and issued recommendations for policymakers and practitioners.
These findings are vital for anyone keen on contributing to a democratic and sustainable One thing that is interesting about the U.S. approach to diplomatic appointments, as we've been saying, is that often for countries maybe where there's not such a complicated relationship, presidents from both parties love to send people that they're close to, whether they're donors, longtime aides.
And so we did a little bit of a survey of the nominees that we are aware of by Trump. So to France, he has named Charles Kushner. He's Jared Kushner, Jared Kushner's father. Jared Kushner, of course, married to Ivanka Trump. Then we have Warren Stevens. He's a billionaire banker.
Former Trump critic turned donor, he's heading to the United Kingdom. Kimberly Guilfoyle is going to Greece. She's Donald Trump Jr.'s ex-fiancee and a former Fox News host. And we have Stacey Feinberg, who's going to Luxembourg. she is a Broadway producer and investor.
You know, Trump likes all these people, so at least you're going to know that they have his ear and that what they say, you know, will echo his thinking. Suzanne, you had some thoughts about at least one of those people. Yeah, I mean, he's keeping it in the family, that's for sure, particularly with Charles Cush.
the father of Jared Kushner. He pardoned him in his first term because back in 2005 Kushner pleaded guilty to illegal campaign contributions and tax evasion. He was then pardoned by Trump back in 2020. going to Paris. Kimberly Galfoyle is a really interesting one. What's most fascinating I think about her is her own past. She was married to Gavin Newsom.
Maybe a candidate for president on the Democratic side. She's got a very interesting background. She's an accomplished lawyer as well as being a Fox News host. But she was effectively the first lady of a San Francisco mayor back in the distant past. Her father is also from Ireland.
Most people don't know, I can tell. And she did study in Dublin for a while. But more recently, she has been the partner of Donald Trump Jr. And now there are a lot of reports that Donald Trump Jr. is now in a relationship with somebody else, a socialite in Florida.
has been given this position in Greece. But I think what's interesting, I came across a few times, I was based in Washington during the Trump years, and people may remember she gave a memorable speech at the Republican Convention in 2020, which was extremely loud. and ecstatic and animated. Leaders and fighters for freedom and liberty and the American dream, the best is yet to come.
But I think what's more significant that people forget, she also spoke on the morning of January the 6th. I was there in the ellipse when Trump gave that very dark speech before his supporters went up and assaulted the Capitol. And she also gave a speech. And she gave a short speech, but it was extremely divisive, extremely animated. We will not allow the Liberals and the Democrats to steal our dream or steal our... It just, I think, goes to show...
where she lies politically. She is a Trump MAGA true believer who has had a role at the centre of Trump power during the first administration right up until now. So Greece, obviously an ally of America, a NATO member. interesting to see him populating these capitals with close allies and people with direct family connections. Indeed, sending some firebrands to the European capitals, people that he's very close to. Another firebrand that he nominated.
is Rick Grenell. He was the former ambassador to Germany. He was not particularly beloved in Berlin, but now he's the special envoy for kind of special missions. He's supposed to maybe deal with Venezuela and North Korea. Trump also named retired Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg to be his envoy for dealing with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He has a much more conventional background, a former national security advisor to Vice President Mike.
Pence is seen as, you know, pretty serious person. So Eva, what do you make of this sort of mix and this kind of combination of relatively conventional people with these more kind of Trump loyalist firebrands? Yeah, I think there are few exceptions, Keith Kellogg being one.
Marco Rubio, in some sense, the Secretary of State being another, and of course Mike Waltz as National Security Advisor, are sort of mainstream Republicans who have served in government, either in the case of Waltz, both in the vice president.
president's office and in the Pentagon and, of course, was a Green Beret with service in Afghanistan and other parts of the Middle East. Marco Rubio has been a senator on the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Armed Services and Senate Intelligence Committee.
Kellogg, a retired three-star general who has policy experience both in the Pentagon. Those are the kinds of people you would expect in a relatively normal administration. But they're the exception, to be very clear. And it's also to be very clear.
They may be a voice in the room, but they're just a voice because the only voice that really matters in this administration is that that comes from the White House or the Winter Palace, Mar-a-Lago, where the President Donald Trump sits and spends most of his time if he's not on the golf course. And he is going to be directing policy and he's putting people in place to do what he wants them to do, not.
to provide the best possible advice so that he can use that advice in order to decide how to move policy forward because he already knows the answer on all of this stuff. And he will put... people in place who just do his bidding. And that's true for most of his cabinet officers. Pete Hexheff has a constituency of one. Donald Trump, I mean, Marco Rubio has a larger constituency, but...
Pete Hexas only has a constituency as one. That's the reality. That's number one. And number two is this is going to be just a very, very different administration. It's going to be nothing like Trump won and nothing like anything we have seen since, I don't know. 120 years when President Trump talks about taking over Greenland or retaking control of the Panama Canal. He's not just spouting. He's saying stuff that he's very, very serious about. He doesn't believe in the rules-based system.
Marco Rubio said in his confirmation hearing that the post-war global order is obsolete, that it has been weaponized against us. That's not how most Europeans would look at the post-war order, I think. The problem is that the Europeans need to understand the U.S. is not going to play by those rules anymore.
On the other hand, some people said, you know, look, we learned from his first term that he says a lot of inflammatory stuff, maybe as a negotiating tactic, as a scare tactic. Trump likes to point out that he. successfully convinced some EU countries into contributing more of their GDP to defense spending to meet their NATO requirements. You know, he could actually essentially just take Greenland by executive order, since as we've discussed in an earlier edition of...
the podcast. The U.S. already basically is the only military force in Greenland. He said he was going to pull out of the World Health Organization. But then in a speech over the weekend, he said, well, maybe I could reconsider if they enact some reform. So Suzanne... Here in Brussels and you were in Davos last week, are people hearing this more as just negotiating tactics or are they like, oh, no, he's really serious this time. He's going to do all this really transformational stuff.
Yeah, I think they're hoping it is a negotiation tactic and that he's just trying to leverage, you know, use this as a carrot to get his way. But I do think, and I've heard a lot of people, I was at an event this week in Brussels and more on the... corporate side and I think what people are hoping for is that they see this as potentially a blip. A lot of people said to me here oh in two years there's a midterm election things might change. They're seeing this as an aberration.
But it's not an aberration. I mean, we could be into a real change in US policy here that's more long term than people realise. The return of Trump means that we're at a turning point in how America sees its role in the world.
and sees its role in global trade. And there has been research showing that, yes, while most Americans still want America to play a responsible role in the world, those numbers are falling. So are we at an inflection point, to quote President Biden? I personally think we may well be.
And if that's the case, well, then I think Trump is going to push through. So I think it's a bit of wishful thinking going on here. In saying that, I think the EU is in a bit of a better position than some countries because...
It's not completely dependent on the US for trade and it can fight back. You know, it's a big trade block, which can't really be ignored. So in that sense, it can fight back. I think the bigger issue for Europe is where it stands now in the global world order, that it's beginning to look... very small compared to China America and we saw last week in Davos the two of us were there I mean
Everybody was talking about the weakness of the European economy. And they figured, to back this up, the lack of a capital markets union, the lack of an investment climate, the lack of startup tech industries that can't grow in Europe, that's been a problem for ages now.
Now it's increasingly diverging from the US. And that is a problem that the EU is trying to address. We saw this week the release of this competitiveness plan by the European Commission. But, you know, there are big questions now for Europe about its future and its strength vis-a-vis America. and the rest of the world. I think Suzanne has it exactly right. You know, I think it is an inflection point. But Europe would make a huge mistake.
to think it's not an inflection point, that it will go away. And it has a huge opportunity to actually get its matters in order, both on the economic side that Susanna mentioned, and on the trading side, you're already seeing a new agreement in America, or a new agreement in Mexico.
There are other agreements that are in the works of Australia and other countries that will have a fundamental implication for the trading capacity of Europe without having to rely on the United States. And the same is true on defense. I know that Donald Trump loves to say that he is responsible for it. The defense increases even though most of the defense increases happened after he left office. And the only person who's really responsible for this is Vladimir Putin.
And as long as Vladimir Putin is in Russia, the Europeans are going to get more serious about defense. And being more serious about defense with less America is something that Europeans now should take to heart. I think Greenland is a test case from that perspective. But there is this opportunity. This is a union of 450 million people with a remarkable capacity for economic and diplomatic capability.
If you continue to think that the answer to every problem lies in Washington rather than in Brussels or in European capitals, you're going to be eaten alive. But if you actually think about how you can use the power that you have as Europeans, as the union, you can actually defend your interests and then deal some significant blows to the Trumpian view of world order. And perhaps.
enable the return of a more rules-based system down the road. But by thinking that it's not happening, by not taking it seriously, you're just... not going to be able to achieve what you need to achieve as Europeans, whereas taking it seriously and using the opportunity to create the capital market, to become more competitive, and to really bolster European defense capabilities makes you much more serious.
player. I want to just go back to one other point that the Trump administration seems more interested in dealing with than with Europe. We talked about how Marco Rubio called many European foreign ministers before he actually called Kayakalas in Brussels.
Suzanne, what is the significance of that? Well, I think, to be honest, he's right. Because I think in defence and foreign policy, the European capital are what matters. I mean, the EAS, which is the foreign policy wing, the KALAS heads up, has always been constrained in its ability to...
act. It's been this thing that was created after the Lisbon Treaty that's kind of half in the Commission, half in the Council. It's always been constrained by what its member states want. So this whole phrase we all know about who do you call when you call Europe. I mean, with the...
The absence of a lot of big leadership now, we've obviously got the elections in Germany, we've got a weakened Macron. I can see why this outreach by the Secretary of State to his peers in different national capitals is a good idea. Because really the biggest... issue now for Marco Rubio when it comes to Europe is Ukraine. What's going to happen next in Ukraine? And really, the US is going to determine.
what happens in Ukraine. No matter what happens, Europe cannot, even if it wants to, fill that gap that might be left by an American retreat in terms of money, in terms of arms, in terms of commitments, etc. So I think this is speaking to an issue for Europe, the EU, as it goes forward. What role does it have when it comes to, for example, the negotiations on Ukraine? Yes, it does. And the Commission have a lot of power on sanctions. We saw that again this week. Sanctions, trade.
you know, economic pressure on Russia. But when it comes to actually what's happening in the Ukraine-Russia war, it doesn't. It's the national capital. It's the NATO members. So in that sense, I think it's not that surprising that he reached out to those people first. Nick, I want to come back to you. Looking ahead to Puzder's Senate confirmation, do you see any signs of vulnerability or do you expect him to just breeze through?
He probably won't breeze through. I guess probably his biggest upside is that this stuff kind of all got aired out in 2017. And to some extent, as long as there aren't like big new revelations, which obviously are still possible in theory, people could just be kind of a nerd to it through the passage of time. And therefore, they'd be willing to let him go back.
Could be a big possibility, but he did withdraw before his Senate confirmation hearing last time around. So this never really did get hashed out in open forums in the Senate. And so. we don't fully know there was a lot of like behind closed doors they were airing grievances and whatnot and really urging the trump team at the time to kind of back down from this but
We didn't know like a push comes to shove if they like put them in an open forum, if they get in line, which I think is the general expectation this time around. Okay. Nick, Evo, Suzanne, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. And if you want to hear more from Ivo, you can check out his podcast. It's called World Review with Ivo Dalder. We'll put a link in our show notes. And that's it for this episode of EU Confidential.
Those of you who haven't yet subscribed to EU Confidential, please do. Thank you to Deanna Sturris, our senior audio producer, and to Anne McAlvoy, Politico's head of audio. I'm Sarah Wheaton. See you next week.