Ric Grenell, the Fox News contributor turned ambassador to Germany, has so repeatedly offended one of our most important allies that they want to throw him out.
It’s pretty clear that Grenell sees his mission as igniting tensions with Germany more than diplomacy. In June, 2018, Politico reported:
It is hard to overstate just how brashly he has charged onto the Berlin political scene during his first month in town. With a tweet (instructing German businesses to “wind down operations immediately” in Iran), an interview (in which he told Breitbart News he hoped to “empower” conservatives across Europe), a meeting (with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seen as a breach of protocol for another country’s ambassador to arrange) and an invitation (to host Austria’s young, hard-line anti-immigration chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, whom Grenell referred to as a “rock star,” for lunch), Grenell has managed to shock and anger Berlin’s political and diplomatic elite. The outspoken rhetorical style of the 51-year-old former spokesman of the U.S. mission to the United Nations, his tendency to channel the president who sent him here and, perhaps most important, his outsize perception of his job stand in stark contrast to U.S. ambassadors who came before him—and have rubbed protocol-loving Germans exactly the wrong way.
Even back then, German politicians called on the U.S. to withdraw Grenell. But Donald Trump thinks Grenell is doing a great job. Trump recently explained his reluctance to nominate Grenell to be U.N. ambassador by saying, “Ric is doing so well that I wouldn’t want to move him.”
Most recently, Grenell attacked Germany’s defense budget calling it “unacceptable” in an intentionally inflammatory tweet:
Ambassador Grenell in @AP on #Germany’s defense #budget plans: “reducing its already unacceptable commitments to military readiness is a worrisome signal to Germany’s 28 #NATO allies.” https://t.co/MzLpaI6Bme
— US-Botschaft Berlin (@usbotschaft) March 18, 2019
Now there are calls by high-ranking German politicians for Grenell’s expulsion. Yesterday’s Politico Europe reported that the deputy speaker of Germany's Bundestag, Wolfgang Kubicki, condemned Grenell for interfering in a sovereign country’s policy. "If a U.S. diplomat acts like a high commissioner of an occupying power, he will have to learn that our tolerance has its limits," Kubicki said. The Social Democrats' parliamentary manager Carsten Schneider called Grenell “a complete failure” at his job.