Many of the donors that Trump has appointed to serve as ambassadors have been forcing out the career diplomats that serve under them, and as usual Pompeo’s State Department has done nothing to defend its own people. Robbie Gramer reports:

Lana Marks is a successful fashion designer and member of U.S. President Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. Though she has no prior diplomatic experience, Marks is also Trump’s ambassador to South Africa, and last month she forced out her second in command, the veteran career foreign service officer David Young. According to multiple current and former officials familiar with the matter, the issue arose following Marks’s attempts to elevate her son to a senior role in the embassy, an apparent violation of State Department rules [bold mine-DL].

The incident illustrated a growing trend in the Trump administration. Already, several of Trump’s political allies-turned-ambassadors—he has appointed a higher percentage than most previous presidents—have sacked their deputies amid a culture of mistrust between politically appointed and career State Department officials.

The practice of selling ambassadorships to wealthy donors is an old one, but it is one that Trump has used even more than his predecessors. Not only are most of these ambassadors unqualified for the positions they hold, but as the Marks case shows some are guilty of mismanagement and abusing those positions. It is not unheard of for an ambassador to remove a deputy chief of mission, but this is happening much more frequently and often for no good reason:

“We are deeply concerned by the number of removals of deputy chiefs of mission overseas, which are happening at way above the normal pace,” said Eric Rubin, a senior foreign service officer currently serving as president of the American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents U.S. diplomats. “It’s generally very rare for a DCM to be removed by the ambassador. It does happen. Sometimes it happens for a good cause. But it’s rare. And it is now becoming an epidemic.”

Clashes between political appointees and career officials are to be expected sometimes, but when they do happen the department should be willing to support the latter, especially when they have been forced out for the wrong reasons. Just as Pompeo has not lifted a finger to support State Department officials that have been the target of public smear attacks, he has apparently done nothing to support the officials forced out of several embassies:

In past administrations, career officials including deputy chiefs of mission felt they had the support of the State Department if their ambassador was causing issues. That’s not the case now, said Lewis Lukens, a former longtime career diplomat. “There’s zero support or pushback from the department for the career people,” he said.

Lukens told GQ that he was forced out of his job as deputy chief in London in 2018 by Trump’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Woody Johnson, after mentioning former President Barack Obama in speeches he gave to British students.

“When I was being told I had to leave seven months early, the answer from the department was, ‘Look, the ambassador is a friend of the president’s, he’s a friend of Trump’s, and there’s nothing we can do,’” Lukens told Foreign Policy. “I imagine that some of these other people are facing that same situation.”

The lack of department support for career diplomats reflects the administration’s overall hostility to the State Department, which has only made relations between the political appointees and career officials worse:

Several other current State Department officials who spoke to Foreign Policy on condition of anonymity concurred. “The level of mistrust of the career service by incoming political appointees is extraordinarily high on average,” said one.

“There is this implicit assumption that the career people can’t be trusted, which is both very corrosive to our institution, but also very unfair and inaccurate. The signal that sends to the career staff is really, really harmful,” said another.

Political appointees can sometimes be useful as ambassadors if they happen to have a good personal relationship with the president they serve under, but for the most part they don’t make U.S. diplomacy more effective. As we are seeing with many of the current crop of donors, they can actively harm it. This problem didn’t begin with Trump, but his appointees have made it worse. It is long past time that the U.S. stop entrusting these positions to political donors and require that nominees have some relevant qualifications if they are not already members of the Foreign Service. Elizabeth Warren has proposed that political donors no longer be given these positions, and other candidates should endorse that proposal. We should put an end to the practice of selling ambassadorships once and for all.