How US envoy Kushner’s ‘incomprehension’ of diplomacy stunned France

 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/02/27/europe/us-envoy-kushner-diplomacy-stuns-france-intl

French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux said the US ambassador had now provided assurances he had not meant to interfere in “the internal sphere of France.” As to Kushner’s initial no-show when summoned, Confavreux made allowances for the American real-estate magnate, who only took up his functions as ambassador to Paris in July, being relatively new to the more genteel world of diplomacy.

Yet beyond the ruffling of French feathers by a lack of diplomatic niceties lies the deeper question of how to handle increasingly obvious American attempts to interfere in European domestic matters

 – often using the very public platform X.

All three cases demonstrate at once a break with traditional diplomatic form, the use of social media rather than back channels, and a new willingness on the part of Washington to involve itself more aggressively in the judicial or political processes of other countries, and specifically European ones.