The occupier of the Oval Office it doing what presidents have always done, rewarding a loyal supporter or friend with a not-so-critical ambassadorship. The difference between Trump and almost every other president, however, is that the others made at least a stab at finding nominees who were qualified. And generally shied away from total nutjobs.
President Donald Trump's nominee to be the ambassador to Barbados and several other Caribbean countries spread fringe conspiracy theories and unfounded attacks about Trump's political opponents on Twitter, including ones about Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi, during the 2016 presidential election.
Trump in January nominated Leandro Rizzuto Jr., a senior executive at Conair, to be the next ambassador to Barbados, as well as to serve concurrently as ambassador to Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. His nomination requires Senate confirmation.
During the height of the Republican presidential primary, Rizzuto spread smears about Trump's opponents, including Cruz, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a CNN KFile review of Rizzuto's Twitter account shows.
This one is going to be particularly interesting to get through the Senate, provided he doesn't withdraw before he gets to that point. One of his conspiracy theories is not just that Cruz was unfaithful to his wife (I know, your brain doesn't even want to put Cruz and sex together) but that Heidi Cruz is part of an organized effort to "destroy the sovereignty of the United States" by forcing it into a union with Canada and Mexico. "If Ted becomes US President," reads one tweet that CNN unearthed, "it virtually ensures the dissolving of the USA and the formation of the NAU. This would put Heidi Cruz in line to become the First Lady—NOT of the USA, but of the new North American Union." Which doesn't make sense even in conspiracy theory land because everyone knows that it's Ted that's the Canadian, not Heidi. But maybe marrying a Canadian was part of her evil plan all along.
Also, too, back in the primary days, Rizzuto retweeted compratiots' tweets declaring Mitt Romney is in the thrall of Satan and is going to hell, that Kasich and Cruz were funded by George Soros who "worked for Hitler helping kill his own people the jews," and that Scott Walker was expelled from college for cheating (which is actually pretty believable, but not true).
This one probably isn't going to happen. No matter what the rest of the Senate thinks of Ted Cruz, it's hard imagining them giving this guy a thumbs up.