The rollicking GOP presidential fight has captured the attention of world leaders, and the United States ambassador to the United Nations said the spike in viewership for the first debate can be credited to U.N. ambassadors and their staffs tuning in.
U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power. Photos by Michael Bonfigli/Christian Science Monitor
“I have not done a straw poll but my guess based on the sort of feedback in the hall is that the unprecedented viewership of the first Republican debate that some significant share, some modest share of that spike came from other country’s ambassadors watching the debate,” said Powers Wednesday.
She said that world leaders are more interested in the GOP field than normal. While she did not mention front-runner Donald Trump, the focus of Wednesday’s CNN debate, she hinted that the leaders are eager to see somebody else emerge, someone more in tune with traditional presidents.
“In other words, I think there is more interest at this stage of the election, in some of the more colorful aspects of the primaries than there might have been in the past, um, but look, there’s a deep interest in who runs America. And so I think as things winnow down, I’ll probably hear more, but right now, you know, until things sort of settle, you don’t hear about specific individuals and so forth. You just hope that cooler heads will prevail and that we’ll continue to exercise leadership in accordance with international norms, and that we will continue to want to build multilateral coalitions and so forth,” she said at a media event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
