As you might imagine, career State Department employees and civil servants are not happy that Trump has decided to pick a fight with the mayor of London following a terrorist attack.
Trump initially attacked London Mayor Sadiq Khan for telling people there's no reason to be alarmed by an increased police presence.
At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is "no reason to be alarmed!"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 4, 2017
While Mayor Khan said there's no reason to be alarmed by an increased police presence, Trump misrepresented his remarks to make it appear as if he said there's no reason at all to be alarmed.
You might say terrorists want people to be as afraid as Trump apparently thinks they should be, but that's another topic.
Multiple State Department officials who spoke to Buzzfeed News said they were embarrassed by Trump's behavior.
"It's embarrassing that the White House got into a Twitter fight" in the middle of a serious terrorist incident, a State Department official told BuzzFeed News. Another State Department official said Trump's tweets left him speechless. [...]
"Trump responded to whatever drivel he saw on Fox," the official said. "We don't have an ambassador to the UK or an EUR A/S so it makes it that much harder to play catch up after he tweets something stupid."
Department officials shared these sentiments with Buzzfeed yesterday and Trump actually doubled down this morning by referring to Mayor Khan as "pathetic."
Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan who had to think fast on his "no reason to be alarmed" statement. MSM is working hard to sell it!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
He also blamed Democrats for not confirming his nominees (of which he has very few) while confirming that he was watching drivel on Fox.
.@foxandfriends Dems are taking forever to approve my people, including Ambassadors. They are nothing but OBSTRUCTIONISTS! Want approvals.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 5, 2017
Republicans control both chambers of Congress and there is no longer a filibuster for appointments.
Trump hasn't nominated anyone to fill over 400 positions and that includes the UK. Trump hasn't formally nominated an ambassador to the UK by submitting their name to the Senate. Some of Trump's limited number of nominees have backed out.
I don't necessarily enjoy covering Trump's tweets as much as I did today, but if he's going to keep using it at as a platform to attack our allies and undermine his own administration, I'm going to keep covering it.
Opposing Trump becomes better domestic politics in other countries with each passing day and each set of tweets. Foreign candidates for office are going to run and win on anti-Trump platforms. That could have repercussions for the rest of us as well and for the next administration after Trump is gone.