New Trump foreign affairs pick has history of forging ties with right-wing authoritarians

Richard Grenell, named by Donald Trump over the weekend to serve as presidential envoy for special missions, is a veteran of the first administration who has earned the president-elect’s trust by amplifying his election denialism while forging close ties, both in and out of office, with right-wing authoritarians and populists.

A former spokesperson for U.S. ambassadors to the United Nations in the early 2000s, Grenell’s government experience reaches back to the neoconservative era of President George W.