Former Gov. Jon Huntsman was confirmed as ambassador to Russia on a unanimous Senate vote, filling a key diplomatic post in President Trump’s administration.
“That’s pretty unheard of for a post as divisive as Russia,” Abby Huntsman, a Fox News anchor and daughter of the Utah Republican, tweeted Thursday.
Huntsman’s nomination proceeded without the partisan gamesmanship that can delay other nominations, perhaps because of the tension between the United States and Russia rather than despite it. The new ambassador thrilled Democrats with his denunciation of Russian aggression, notwithstanding their deep skepticism of the president’s attitudes toward Russia.
“I’m enthusiastically supporting his nomin[ation] and hope we can get him to Moscow as soon as possible,” Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday morning.
Huntsman, a former ambassador to China, will lead the State Department mission to Russia at a time of historic tension with the former Cold War rival. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 led to the imposition of international sanctions on Putin’s regime; competing objectives in Syria put the U.S. and Russia on opposition sides of a civil war complicated by the rise of the Islamic State.
And Russian interference in the 2016 elections led to a diplomatic feud that has seen Putin slash the number of American personnel operating in the country and the Obama and Trump administrations to seize a number of Russian facilities in the United States.
Huntsman blamed Russia for the rifts. “I will also not hesitate to remind [Russian] government officials that they are accountable for their actions,” Huntsman told the foreign relations panel in his prepared statement earlier this month. “Exhibit A is the fact that interference in the U.S. election has led directly to the current low level of trust in the relationship.”
