European officials are mounting an unprecedented campaign to block President Trump’s putative nomination of Ted Malloch as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union (EU).

According to reports, “major political groups” of the European Parliament have formally requested that the Commission and European Council refuse Ted Malloch’s credentials, if he is named as U.S. Ambassador to the EU.

The request specifically referred to Malloch’s “outrageous malevolence against the values that define this European Union.”

It’s true that Malloch hasn’t exactly been shy in expressing his disdain for the EU, declaring that the failure of the European integration project “should by now be self-apparent to everyone.”

“The European Union has become undemocratic and bloated by both bureaucracy and rampant anti-Americanism,” he wrote in a recent op-ed.

The movement toward a socialist United States of Europe, Malloch stated, “is very harmful to US business, to US investment, to US security, and is categorized by over-regulation, low growth, high unemployment, and structural rigidity.”

Yes, despite EU officials’ evident indignation at Malloch’s stinging barbs, a preemptive strike against an ambassador that hasn’t even been nominated yet is without precedent.

“The EU does not want anyone but a pro-EU, US ambassador to go to Brussels,” Malloch said. “This undemocratic institution wants to force the US to keep things the way they were and deny President Trump his selection and to stop his views from being articulated there. They fear such truth and its forthright challenge.”

As even the liberal Guardian quipped, “it was never a requirement of envoys to the Soviet Union that they support communism, or to Saudi Arabia that they support misogyny.” It is, in fact, the job of an ambassador to clearly articulate the position of the administration he represents, and not the position of the entity to which he is sent.

Never one to play defense, Malloch told Breitbart News that perhaps a counter-off is in order:

“I suggest that we arrange an independent academic inquiry to go through all the ambassadors accredited to the EU who are representing human rights abuser regimes; have publicity endorsed human rights abuses; supported terrorism and some of whom probably are personal human rights abusers themselves,” Malloch said.

“We could then release a dossier and invite the EP human rights committee to a meeting to discuss this problem,” he added.

One might also wonder whether slapping the Trump administration in the face by attempting to block his chosen representative doesn’t do far more harm to U.S.-EU relations than the blunt positions of the prospective ambassador.

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