Oppose Climate Denier Kelly Knight Craft for UN Ambassador - Final Vote this Week
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UPDATE: (09/08/19) The Senate is expected to hold a final confirmation vote for Kelly Knight Craft the week of September 9th.
UPDATE: (07/22/19): Documents from a hearing before the full Senate Foreign Relations committee reveal that as ambassador to Canada, Kelly Knight Craft has spent up to 7 of 20 months away from her post in Ottowa, many times travelling to places where she owns homes. Craft also involved her husband, a coal industry billionaire executive, in discussions about energy and environment matters.
Climate denier and current ambassador to Canada Kelly Knight Craft has been named by Trump to succeed Nikki Haley as UN ambassador. Craft’s qualifications for the UN role are thin, with only nominal roles as a member of the UN delegation during the George W. Bush administration and limited participation in renegotiating the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (formerly NAFTA) as the Canadian ambassador. What she does bring is a long track record as a generous Republican donor and supporter of GOP politics in Kentucky, with her chief ally in the Senate being Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The spouse of Kentucky coal billionaire Joseph W. Craft, III, Kelly Knight Craft caused uproar in 2017 by telling journalists “I believe there are scientists on both sides that are accurate. I think that both sides have their own results, from their studies, and I appreciate and I respect both sides of the science” thus validating a false dichotomy and denying the reality of global climate change.
[Typically, generous donors to both parties have been awarded comfortable, non-controversial ambassadorships] (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/25/trumps-new-nominee-un-ambassador-will-be-laughingstock/?utm_term=.e2f77c5ba1cd), as a token of gratitude for their generosity, but the UN ambassador position is a far more complex, difficult job that has usually been awarded to a person with substantial foreign policy or scholarly experience. With Craft’s nomination, the Trump administration is demonstrating its lack of commitment to the UN and treating it as a reward for a generous donor. Demand that your Senator oppose Kelly Knight Craft for UN Ambassador.
