The Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic Staff Report on Diplomacy in Crisis
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 4 August 2020
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Last Friday the Lawfare Podcast brought you Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's full statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his question and answer session with the senators, all with "no bull." A few days before that hearing, the Democratic staff of the Committee released its most recent oversight report titled "Diplomacy in Crisis: The Trump Administration's Decimation of the State Department." Following remarks by Ranking Member Bob Menendez, Margaret Taylor moderated a panel discussion about the report featuring three distinguished former ambassadors with close to 75 years of diplomatic experience between them—Tom Shannon, Barbara Stephenson and Bonnie Jenkins—as well as Elizabeth Shackelford, who in 2017 resigned her career post in protest of the Trump administration. They talked about the contents of the minority staff report, the recommendations it contains and the long-term consequences of what the report documents for America's foreign policy and national security interests.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following podcast contains advertising to access an ad-free version of the LawFair |
| 0:07.2 | podcast become a material supporter of LawFair at patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:14.7 | That's patreon.com slash LawFair. |
| 0:18.2 | Also, check out LawFair's other podcast offerings, rational security, chatter, LawFair |
| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:33.9 | There was a 22 point increase from 2016 to 2019 among employees in the legal bureau who |
| 0:41.4 | reported that arbitrary acts, personal favoritism and coercion for partisan political purposes |
| 0:48.8 | was tolerated, rising from 1% in 2016 to 23% in 2019. |
| 0:56.7 | The percentage of respondents in the international organizations bureau who said that senior |
| 1:02.2 | leaders did not maintain high standards of honesty and integrity nearly tripped from |
| 1:07.7 | 12% in 2016 to 35% in 2019. |
| 1:12.9 | Sadly, given the rhetoric we've seen, these numbers aren't surprising. |
| 1:18.3 | I'm Margaret Taylor and this is the LawFair podcast, August 4, 2020. |
| 1:25.3 | Last Friday, the LawFair podcast brought you Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's full statement |
| 1:30.4 | before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his question and answer session with the |
| 1:34.0 | senators all with no bull. |
| 1:36.4 | A few days before that hearing, the Democratic staff for the committee released its most recent |
| 1:41.1 | oversight report titled, Diplomacy in Crisis, the Trump administration's decimation of the |
| 1:46.5 | State Department. |
| 1:47.9 | I moderated a panel discussion about that report. |
| 1:51.4 | Following remarks by ranking member Bob Menendez, the expert panel featured three distinguished |
| 1:56.3 | former ambassadors with close to 75 years of diplomatic experience between them, Tom Shannon, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Lawfare Institute, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Lawfare Institute and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.