MAGA meets Europe: Trump's envoys rip up diplomatic playbook | World | postguam.com

At least Bill White, Donald Trump’s ambassador to Brussels, showed up when summoned by the foreign ministry over what officials described as undiplomatic interventions in Belgian politics.

His counterpart in Paris, Charles Kushner, on Monday snubbed a similar summons, prompting France to cut off his contact with government officials. Calm was restored when the former real estate developer called Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Tuesday and said he aimed to avoid interfering in domestic affairs. France plans to restore Kushner’s access, according to people familiar with the matter.

“We don’t accept that foreign countries can come and interfere, can invite themselves into the national political debate, whatever the circumstances,” Barrot said on France Info radio on Tuesday. “There is nothing more normal than summoning an ambassador when an explanation is needed.”

The State Department confirmed the call in a statement, saying the talk was “frank and amicable” and that Kushner and Barrot agreed to work together.

The arena where the conflict between MAGA and Europe is playing out most routinely is on the ground. The presidential envoys, traditionally thought of as bridge builders, have instead been publicly picking fights with their hosts in service of a boss who has made contempt for the European Union a pillar of his foreign policy.

While disputes between countries, even allies, are a regular part of international relations, it is noticeable that the complaints are concentrated in countries with governments that define themselves in part in opposition to domestic populist movements, often viewed as natural political allies of the U.S. administration.

Trump himself hasn’t shied away. The U.S. president affirmed his “complete and total” endorsement of Hungary Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Washington on Thursday. Orban faces a tight election on April 12.

It is not the first run-in between the French government and Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. In August, Kushner sent his deputy to receive a dressing down after he sparked the French government’s ire with an editorial that accused President Emmanuel Macron of not doing enough to fight anti-semitism.

In Belgium, White, who took up his post in November, also waded quickly into domestic politics in the notoriously fractious country.

Last week, the New Yorker was summoned by the country’s foreign minister after he accused Belgium of anti-semitism over a judicial investigation related to Jewish ritual circumcision in Antwerp, a city with a large Orthodox Jewish community. White demanded that the case over whether three “mohels” - Jewish ritual circumcisers - were performing procedures without the required medical training be dropped.

Foreign Minister Maxime Prévot accused White of peddling “dangerous disinformation that undermines the real fight against hatred.”

White, who previously took aim at members of the European Parliament, subsequently threatened to impose visa restrictions on Conner Rousseau, the leader of the center-left party Vooruit, which is part of Belgium’s coalition government. Rousseau had compared the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to the rise of Nazism in Europe and Trump to Hitler in a social media video. White agreed to back down Tuesday after another meeting with Prévot, according to the foreign minister.

White hasn’t hesitated to get personal, calling Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke, also from the Vooruit party, “very rude” in a post on X and accusing him of refusing to shake hands or be photographed together after a meeting over the circumcision issue.

On Monday, Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever gave his first public comments on the growing controversy surrounding White, which has dominated Belgian media, saying it “is not the role of an ambassador to sow discord in national politics.”

Trump’s envoy to Poland, Tom Rose, who describes himself as a “not-so-secret agent of MAGA Judeo-Christian Conspiracy” on his personal X account, has also made waves. Months before he officially took his post in November, he warned the junior party in the ruling coalition of U.S. retaliation if it did not drop a plan to introduce a tax on Big Tech.

Tensions escalated this month when he declared he would cease all contact with the speaker of the Polish parliament, Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, over comments he made about President Donald Trump.

Czarzasty’s “outrageous and unprovoked insults directed against President Trump” have made him “a serious impediment to our excellent relations” with Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his government, Rose said, without specifying which comments triggered his decision.

Czarzasty subsequently said he refused to sign a letter circulated by U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Tusk backed Czarzasty in a post on X: “Mr. Ambassador Rose, allies should respect, not lecture, each other. At least this is how we, here in Poland, understand partnership.”

France’s Barrot, for his part, took aim Tuesday at the tools most commonly used by Trump’s ambassadors to make their points, including social media platforms such as X.

The French government’s responsibility “is to take back control over our public space,” Barrot said. “That goes by bringing to heel these social networks that serve as a sort of platform for a certain number of these international reactionary movements to come in and disrupt public debate and undermine the integrity of our democratic process.”

With assistance from Julien Ponthus.