Trump remakes American diplomacy in Florida's image

One out of every three nominees to ambassador- level positions in the Trump administration hails from the president's adopted home state of Florida, a higher percentage than any other state has produced in the past two decades

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From Panama to Singapore, President Donald Trump is deploying an unprecedented number of Floridians to represent the United States as he transforms the country's approach to diplomacy.

One out of every three nominees to ambassador-level positions in the Trump administration hails from the president's adopted home state of Florida, a higher percentage than any other state has produced in the past two decades. The nation’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is also from Florida. “Clearly, Florida is the political epicenter of Trump world,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, who recently left his role in the administration as the US State Department's special envoy to Latin America and served in numerous roles in the first Trump administration.

The nominations — highly coveted positions given to top supporters in any administration — come as the president has deprioritized career diplomats, radically remaking the country’s foreign policy apparatus. The administration has shuttered the US Agency for International Development, which annually gave billions in foreign aid, and fired more than a thousand US State Department employees last week. Political nominees are often posted to friendly Western allies with little chance of major conflict, while career foreign service officers are often given the most sensitive assignments. This time around, the White House has so far only nominated three career foreign service officers to serve as an ambassador — far less at this point than any administration in the past 25 years — and Florida nominees, who have varying levels of experience, have been tasked with some of the most delicate appointments, including Panama, Mexico and Colombia.