Donald Trump bestowed yet another diplomatic post on someone whose résumé has little relevance to foreign policy.
The appointee has known the president for nearly twenty years. However, she has never spent a single day employed within the State Department.
But it’s her past that gives the public pause.
The nomination landed five days after her husband did the unthinkable, putting himself in Trump’s good graces.
The event took place in Dallas, where Trump took the stage and opened the president’s first-ever midterm convention.
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The White House sent the Senate a nomination on Monday, Sept. 14, for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Barbados.
The post also covers seven countries, including Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
The nominee is Kimberly Payne Greenwood. Her husband is Lee Greenwood.
He is the country singer behind “God Bless the USA,” Trump’s frequent rally entrance song.
Greenwood failed to win over the crowd during his vocally challenging performance on Sept. 10.
Lee Greenwood announced his wife’s new job in a post on X, saying that his heart is overflowing with pride.
“I have proudly supported President Trump since he first announced his intention to lead this great nation, and I remain grateful for his service to America,” said Greenwood.
He later said, “Kim, our family could not be prouder of you.” He added that he’s “deeply grateful for the confidence he has once again placed in her.”
However, Kim Greenwood’s background is in beauty pageants, not government policy.
According to her husband, she has “worked with President Trump for 18 years through the Miss Universe Organization while directing multiple state pageants.”
Kim was Tennessee’s Junior Miss in 1985 and Miss Tennessee USA in 1989.
Today she serves as executive director of Greenwood Productions, which holds the state franchises for the MISS USA and MISS TEEN USA competitions in Tennessee, Mississippi and Georgia.
Those pageants fed into the national contests Trump owned from 1996 to 2015. That’s where the celebration hit a wall.
Many social media users saw the announcement as a reminder, not proof of his wife’s qualification.
In a 2005 appearance on Howard Stern’s show, Trump said that as the owner of the pageants he was “allowed to go in” to dressing rooms before shows, according to Yahoo. He described walking in on contestants “standing there with no clothes” and framing it as inspecting his event.
Those comments referred to Miss USA and Miss Universe, whose contestants are adults.
Separately, in 2016, five women who competed in the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant spoke to BuzzFeed News. They alleged that Trump walked into their dressing room while girls as young as 15 were changing.
Eleven other contestants said they had no memory of it happening, and Trump’s campaign denied the accounts.
Replies under Lee Greenwood’s post about his wife appeared almost immediately, with some stating the irony.
“Good lord,” wrote one person after discovering the news. “Does she have any actual qualifications? What does Trump want from you?” another asked.
One commenter connected the two stories out loud: “She’s the one who let him walk around backstage at the beauty pageants like he’s bragged about? Bet she has some stories.”
“What, at all, qualifies this woman for this role?” another wrote. And one summed up the mood in five words: “Nice to be part of the Trump aristocracy.”
Critics have spent this term cataloging unqualified hires that seem to reward proximity rather than actual experience.
For instance, Karoline Leavitt became the youngest White House press secretary in history at 27, coming from campaign communications.
Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma senator, former plumbing company owner and onetime MMA fighter, took over for Kristi Noem as secretary of Homeland Security. Trump fired her in March.
Former football star Herschel Walker was confirmed as ambassador to the Bahamas last October.
Trump’s history with the pageant world has surfaced before. In January, a former Miss Teen USA said she felt like an “animal in a cage” as Trump and his inner circle ogled her.
Kim Greenwood called the nomination “one of the greatest honors of my lifetime.” She still needs Senate confirmation
