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The White House on Thursday announced it was walking away from the nomination of Elise Stefanik to be the United States’ representative at the United Nations, a plum gig that has been a launching pad for folks like George H.W. Bush and Madeleine Albright. In pulling the nom, the Trump administration acknowledged that the Republicans’ slim majority in the House would be imperiled if she stepped away.
The choice of Stefanik, a no-nonsense and pragmatic millennial, to represent the U.S. at the United Nations was widely viewed as Trump’s most responsible pick in an otherwise chaotic Cabinet. Given a choice between a solid rep on the world stage and a guaranteed yes vote in the House, Trump served himself in the short term but short-changed his already-wobbly diplomatic portfolio.
"There are others that can do a good job at the United Nations," the President wrote on his social-media platform, Truth Social.
Earlier this year, Stefanik stepped out of her role as a member of House Republican Leadership to prepare for her new job in New York, where she was poised to serve at turns as Washington’s enforcer of MAGA’s vision for the world and as that world’s punching bag.
Instead, she is being pushed aside on the argument that her House seat in Upstate New York is too valuable to be put in play. It was an unexpected development for many in Congress, including some Democrats, who looked forward to watching how one of their own might navigate the tricky terrain of global diplomacy while balancing the realities of Trumpism and responsible policy.
House Republicans have a fragile majority, one that is going to be tested next week with special elections in Florida that should be safely red but have some worried a Trump backlash may be stronger than most realize. Republicans around Washington are worried about the pair of ballots heading to school gyms, church rec rooms, and library basements on Tuesday. With a razor-thin majority—and tons of outside money pouring into Florida—House Republicans have zero margin for error. And ceding New York’s seat held by Stefanik would only add to the frailty, even in yet another district that Trump carried easily just a few months ago.
Stefanik had exactly the right resume for the job she just lost. Before joining Congress, she worked in the George W. Bush White House and served as a policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s running mate, future Speaker Paul Ryan. She is a Harvard-educated pro who was seen as a future heavy hitter in the GOP. She put on the armor to be Trump’s defender during two impeachments, even as she realized it was a risky move. She rolled the dice and learned why the House almost always wins.
It was only a few months ago that Trump asked Stefanik to give up her hard-won seat and she agreed. She aced her Senate confirmation hearing. She wooed the right diplomats in courtesy calls. She made the rounds with the proper players in the foreign policy think tanks while winking that she still had an eye on Cold War strategic baselines. She even got plaudits from Democrats who otherwise view the Trump 2.0 team as a parade of amateurism worthy of contempt.
Still, it fell apart when Trump realized he would rather preserve a coin-toss majority in the House than have what some hoped would be a slam-dunk Ambassador on the global stage. It’s why House Speaker Mike Johnson, half-jokingly, said in November that Trump “fully understands and appreciates the math here” to preserve the majority and told him to stop raiding the cookie jar.
At Trump’s first joint address to Congress in his second term, rather than join the Cabinet in the primo stage, Stefanik sat with House rank-and-file membership. She was relegated to the cheap seats because her vote was needed to keep Johnson wedded to the gavel. The bet was that she would get the bump up to the U.N. once things were settled in Florida, where voters have choices next week over who gets to replace Mike Waltz, who got the promotion to run the White House Situation Room as Trump’s national security adviser, and Matt Gaetz, whose alleged interest in young women and drugs forced him from office.
Instead, Stefanik is getting put back on the bench. The White House says she would rejoin House Leadership, but it’s not as if the slots there have an opening. There’s a rich history of parties creating new jobs when exceptional talent is willing to take them on, but Stefanik already gave up a legitimately powerful position to take on that unenviable task of representing Trump on the global stage. Now, she’s back at the job she was set to leave because Republicans have 218 seats in the House, Democrats have 213 seats, and four are open.
Some are surely enjoying some schadenfreude at Stefanik’s expense. Eight years ago, she ran the numbers and decided aligning with Trump would serve her better than joining former bosses like Karl Rove. She defended Trump’s worst impulses, raised a boatload of cash for House Republican sycophants, and hitched her wagon to MAGA’s star. “I look forward to the day when Elise is able to join my Administration in the future,” Trump wrote. In the meantime, she’s the latest casualty of a President burning up his political capital faster than he expected.
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