Trump To Pick Heather Nauert, Former Fox News Anchor, As U.N. Ambassador, Source Says – NPR

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert speaks during a briefing on Aug. 9, 2017. President Trump is expected to announce Friday his nomination of Nauert as the next ambassador to the United Nations.

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State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert speaks during a briefing on Aug. 9, 2017. President Trump is expected to announce Friday his nomination of Nauert as the next ambassador to the United Nations.

Alex Brandon/AP

From Fox & Friends to the State Department, and now likely to the United Nations.

President Trump is expected to announce Friday that he has chosen Heather Nauert, the State Department spokeswoman and a former Fox News host, to become the next ambassador to the U.N., a senior administration official tells NPR’s Tamara Keith.

If confirmed, Nauert would replace Nikki Haley, who is leaving the post at the end of the year.

Nauert was camera-ready when she came to the State Department in April 2017, having worked at ABC and Fox. She never traveled with and was not close to her first boss at the department, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. With Mike Pompeo in charge of State, Nauert has been on the road much more.

Yet she faced some criticism for a tourist-like Instagram post from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on a trip that was meant to focus on the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Nauert (left) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speak with reporters while flying from Panama to Mexico on Oct. 18.

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Nauert (left) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speak with reporters while flying from Panama to Mexico on Oct. 18.

Brendan Smialowski/Pool/AP

There have been other missteps, including the time when she cited D-Day — the Allied invasion of Normandy against the Nazis — as an example of America’s strong relationship with Germany.

She’s been a strong defender of Trump’s at the podium, something he has clearly noticed.

“She’s excellent, she’s been with us a long time, she’s been a supporter for a long time,” Trump told reporters on Nov. 1.

The State Department used to hold daily briefings. That has been scaled back to two a week, at most.

Nauert, 48, has been back and forth between her husband and two sons in New York and her job in Washington, D.C.

Before joining the Trump administration, she had no government or foreign policy experience, though she did work on some overseas assignments for ABC, including in Baghdad.