President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, used her government email to bash Donald Trump before and after the 2016 election, according to documents uncovered by the American Center for Law and Justice.
Power infamously abused authority in the unprecedented unmasking of hundreds of Americans working with the Trump campaign, and the latest documents add to the evidence of her acting on her anti-Trump sentiments in an official capacity.
Starting before the GOP primaries, in an email connecting Oskar Eustis, the artistic director at the Public Theater in New York, with scholar Norman Ornstein, Power commented that a Trump win in the New Hampshire primary would make politics no longer rational.
“Oskar, Norm will explain our political system, in a way that will fleetingly make it seem rational, though maybe not after Trump and Sanders win NH,” she wrote.
The Hill reports that several emails provide ample evidence of the diplomat’s Trump-bashing after the election.
In December 2016, for example, when sent a news story about Trump’s effort to communicate a new policy direction for the U.N., Power snarkily replied: ‘This reflects the lack of understanding of history.’
When Trump announced his intent to withdraw the U.S. from a global climate deal, Power emailed a colleague: ‘Lord help us all.’
And when a routine diplomatic issue with Japan arose in late November 2016, Power emailed another colleague: ‘It is unreal how the Trump dynamic has changed things.’
On election night of 2016, the former ambassador hosted a viewing party at her house for a group of powerful and influential women, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Gloria Steinem, with the idea that they would all be together to watch the first woman become president of the United States. HBO documented the night for their Obama documentary, “The Final Year.”
“For me, every time I see that, I am haunted most, actually, by the images of my children, who were running around the apartment for much of the night, but when the election is called, my daughter, who at that time is four, is just lying in my lap, kind of like this pale, Irish statue, and there’s something about the way she’s lying, I don’t know, that just makes her look like she’s the one who’s going to inherit…what he does is on her, right?” Power told Politico in an interview about election night.
“It’s like we’ve somehow collectively landed in this place, but the people who are going to feel this, and be affected by this are these innocents. And as it happens, I was looking at a young child, but there’s so many other innocents who are being subjected to the cruelty, as we speak here today,” she added.
These are not the types of comments and emails that come from a diplomat on the sideline, watching a political opponent win an open election freely and fairly. They sound more like they belong to someone who was deeply invested in, perhaps even to the point of unmasking, the guaranteed defeat of a political opponent.
