OPINION:
Heather Nauert has just become President Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and the news cycles are filled with talks of how she’d be at the job, what she knows, what she doesn’t know — and how she once, while speaking on behalf of the State Department, “cited D-Day as the height of US-German relations,” as the Washington Post snarked.
“Qualifications questioned,” CNN later snarked.
“If Nauert seems familiar, it’s not just because of her State Department briefings. It was, after all, just last year when Nauert was a Fox News personality, using her ’Fox and Friends’ platform to, among other things, endorse Ivanka Trump’s branded merchandise. Soon after, Nauert became the chief spokesperson for the State Department — because if there’s only thing this president values, it’s a team with television experience,” MSNBC then snarked.
Well, memo to Snarky McSnark face snarkers: If Nauert simply resolves to stand strong on America’s side and in Israel’s court before the very anti-America, anti-Israel United Nations, well then, half her job is done.
Scratch that. Make it 90 percent.
Ninety percent of her job will be done if she only stands tall in the face of all the globalized hand-wringers of the world — if she only, for instance, does what outgoing Ambassador Nikki Haley has done, what former Ambassador John Bolton once did.
Just stand up for America.
Don’t wussy-foot around.
Put — keep — the global body in its place.
“She’s very talented, very smart, very quick, and I think she’s going to be respected by all,” Trump said of Nauert.
“[She’s] a team player,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said of Nauert, back in March, “and a strong asset for the administration.”
Well and good; fine and dandy.
Talented, cooperative, quick-thinking, intelligence — these are all great attributes, all necessary characteristics for successful politicking, for forging successful diplomatic relationships.
But what Beyond-the-Beltway Americans want in their ambassador to the United Nations is much simpler: Just be boldly, outspokenly, unabashedly, unapologetically pro-America and pro-Israel.
Everything else is teachable; everything else comes second.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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