AMBASSADOR/FOREIGN POLICY/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump threw out the diplomatic rule book when he took office, tweeting gleefully about sensitive global issues, be it the nuclear showdown with North Korea or burden sharing within NATO. Now he has spawned a squad of in-house imitators. John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, has tweeted more than 150 times about the political crisis in Venezuela, demanding that the country’s embattled president, Nicolás Maduro, go into exile and championing his waiting-in-the-wings replacement, Juan Guaidó. Jason D. Greenblatt, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy, has taken to Twitter dozens of times to debate or chide Palestinian leaders, with whom the White House has had no formal contact since late 2017, when the president announced he would move the American Embassy to Jerusalem. Other administration officials, like Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany, and David M. Friedman, the ambassador to Israel, have used Twitter aggressively to defend their boss’s policies and go after rivals like Iran. Even Vice President Mike Pence tweets regularly about Venezuela, accusing Cuba of propping up Mr. Maduro’s discredited regime.”
–Mark Landler and Katie Rogers, “Trump’s Aides Are Imitating His Aggressive Twitter Diplomacy. The Results Are Mixed.,” The New York Times online, March 7, 2019