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President Trump has mentioned the names of two people he thinks would be suitable replacements for Elise Stefanik. One is David Friedman, the former American ambassador to Israel, and the second is Ric Grenell, who was formerly the head of National Intelligence and the American ambassador to Germany. More on those possible choices, and others who might be considered, can be found here: “Trump considers former ambassadors Grenell, Friedman for U.N. role,” by Jeff Mason, Reuters, April 1, 2025:
President Donald Trump said on Monday he had several potential candidates for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, including Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany, and David Friedman, a former envoy to Israel.
Last week Trump withdrew the nomination of Representative Elise Stefanik for the job over concerns that her exit from the House of Representatives could threaten Republicans’ narrow majority.
Asked on Monday who he was considering instead, Trump said as many as 30 people were interested in the job.
He listed Grenell, now a special envoy for his administration, as well as the interim president of the Kennedy Center, and Friedman, the ambassador to Israel during Trump’s first term in office.
Grenell, a homosexual who believes his appointment by Trump proves that there is no anti-homosexual bias in the administration, does have many detractors. Susan E. Rice, a Democrat who served as the American ambassador to the UN from 2009 to 2013, has described Grenell as “one of the most nasty, dishonest people I’ve ever encountered.” The senior journalist Irwin Arieff, who worked for Reuters, has also come down hard on Grenell as “the most dishonest and deceptive press person I ever worked with.” The Democrats would certainly bring up these judgments in any Senate hearing on his appointment, and the administration might want to spare itself another difficult confirmation.
“We have a lot of good people that want it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
“We have a lot of people that have asked about it, would like to do it: David Friedman, Ric Grenell, and maybe 30 other people. Everyone loves that position. That’s a star-making position.”
Some have suggested as a possible candidate the former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who already served as the US ambassador to the United Nations during the first part of Trump’s first term. She ran against Trump for the Republican presidential nomination last year and lost. Trump is unlikely to appoint Nikki Haley because of her comments about him during the race for the Republican presidential nomination. He certainly has not mentioned her as a possible candidate.
What about David Friedman? He is Jewish, and a former American ambassador to Israel. He is perhaps too closely identified with the Likud Party for Israel’s own good; in the General Assembly, he will be seen by many as a handmaiden to the Israeli UN Mission. He was confirmed by the Senate as ambassador by a slim margin; only two Democrats — Menendez and Manchin — voted for him. But he has argued eloquently for dropping what he sees as the dangerous “two-state solution” in favor of a modified “one-state solution.” He wants Israel to hold onto Judea and Samaria, and seems to share Netanyahu’s view: that Israel should provide the Palestinian Arabs with “all of the power to govern themselves but none of the power to harm Israel.”
However, there are other candidates whom I hope President Trump will consider. One is Ritchie Torres, the Democratic Congressman from New York’s 15th Congressional district, the poorest district in the United States. Both of his parents were Puerto Rican. Torres was raised in the Bronx projects; he never completed college, but holds his eloquent own in debates. He calls himself a Zionist, saying that a 2015 visit to Israel was “eye-opening,” and he has been described as “aggressively pro-Israel.” However, he still believes in that will-o’-the-wisp, a “two-state solution,” which, after the attacks carried out by Hamas on October 7, 2023, very few Israelis now support. Perhaps Torres will change his mind once he talks to enough Israelis, and discovers the depth of their opposition, and after he has considered, too, what it would mean for Israel’s survival, if every plan for a two-state-solution proposed so far has required it to be squeezed back, with very slight adjustments, within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist from Qalqilya to the sea.
There is one candidate, so far not mentioned by anyone, who could be the ideal American ambassador to the UN. That is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born in Somalia and raised as a Muslim. When growing up, she lived in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, and Kenya, and as a young woman moved to the Netherlands where she became fluent in Dutch and was elected to the Dutch Parliament. She now lives in California, married to the historian Niall Ferguson.. She has converted to Christianity. Ayaan Hirsi Ali knows, from the inside, what Islam teaches, including the hatred of non-Muslims, and the many Qur’anic verses, and the hundreds of Hadith that exhort Muslims to commit violence against Infidels. At the UN, she would be the Muslim ambassadors’ nightmare. Imagine her quoting from the Qur’an in the General Assembly, noting the verse proclaiming that Muslims are “the best of peoples”(3:110) and non-Muslims are “the most vile of created beings” (98:6). Or think of her quoting the verses instructing Muslims to “strike at the necks” of the unbelievers (47:4) and several dozen other Qur’anic passages of similar homicidal import.
Should the treatment of women be under discussion at the General Assembly, Hirsi Ali can describe the conditions that she endured growing up as a Muslim in three Muslim countries. She can explain that a Muslim husband can “beat” his wife if he even suspects her of disobedience; that he can divorce her by uttering the “triple-talaq,” that he has the power of life and death over his wife and children; that Muslim daughters inherit only half of what Muslim sons are provided; that the testimony of Muslim women is worth only half that of Muslim men. She can tell the General Assembly about little Aisha being betrothed to Muhammad when she was six, and how that “marriage” was consummated when she was nine and he was 54. And because of Muhammad’s example, she can explain, there are Muslims today who want to reduce the marriageable age of girls in their countries to nine, or if not nine, then as close to nine as possible. After the Iranian revolution, Ayaan Hirsi Ali can say, the marriageable age for girls was reduced from 18 to 13. She can explain that Muhammad is the Model of Conduct (“uswa hasana”) and the Perfect Man (“al-insan al-kamil”), to be emulated by Muslims today. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is formidable in debate. One example can be found here.
The squirming and embarrassment and fury among the Muslim delegates in the General Assembly would be a sight to behold. What can they say? How dare she quote from the Qur’an which, they will claim, “the American ambassador simply does not understand”? And if some delegate from a Muslim land attempts to suggest that Ayaan Hirsi Ali “does not know the Hadith and therefore cannot fully understand Islam,” she will be quick to respond with the two most embarrassing of the ahadith, as found in the sahih collections of both Bukhari and Muslim, when Muhammad says “I have been made victorious through terror,” and when he claims “War is deceit.” She will, at every debate in the General Assembly, contribute from her bully pulpit at the U.N. to the non-Muslim world’s understanding of Islam. She’ll be a one-woman multitude, impossible either to silence or refute.
Please consider her, President Trump. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a beautiful, articulate black woman who, as an ex-Muslim who has lived in Africa, Europe, and the United States, can present the case against Islam and for Western civilization better than anyone else.
