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- Marie Yovanovitch said former President Trump’s 2016 election win felt like a “slow-motion car crash.”
- In her newly-released memoir, Yovanovitch said she questioned Trump’s adherence to “bedrock American principles.”
- As the US ambassador to Ukraine at the time, she kept her political views to herself.
In November 2016, Marie Yovanovitch had decades of experience as a diplomat under her belt, and as the United States ambassador to Ukraine at the time, she had a leadership role that allowed her to influence policy on the world stage.
However, when she woke up in Ukraine on November 9, 2016, hours ahead of the most Americans, she turned on the television to see that CNN was reporting electoral victories in Ohio and Florida by then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, realizing that he would with all likelihood soon be the country’s next president.
In her newly-released memoir, “Lessons from the Edge,” Yovanovitch revealed how she was deeply affected by the election results, which seemingly clashed with many of the preexisting beliefs that she held regarding American leadership.
“As talking heads took turns explaining the significance of the returns, I felt I was watching a slow-moving car crash,” she wrote. “Trump was going to be the next president of the United States. I couldn’t wrap my mind about what that would mean for the US — and for Ukraine.”
Yovanovitch said that the thought of Trump in the White House “unsettled” her, as he didn’t mirror the values that she felt were a core part of American identity.
“Trump didn’t seem to share many of the bedrock American principles that formed the basis for our partnerships around the world and which had motivated me to join the Foreign Service,” she wrote. “He didn’t seem to appreciate how alliances with our democratic friends had kept the peace, defeated communism, and enabled us to become prosperous and secure.”
Yovanovitch then expressed her distaste with Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” slogan, which the then-Republican candidate used to rally disaffected voters to his campaign, pointing to economic and cultural issues that allowed him to attract support in critical swing and rural areas that tipped the race in his direction.
“Trump wanted to close our borders, halt inclusion, and shut us off from global engagement — in short, to undermine much that in my view made our highly imperfect nation great, not just to ourselves but to the world,” she wrote. “It was because of America’s greatness, indeed, that the international community in Ukraine looked to the American embassy, where we represented a country of unmatched principle and power.”
In her memoir, Yovanovitch expressed that as a government official at the time, she certainly would not have disclosed her opinions about Trump or his candidacy, but she continued to hold firm to her personal beliefs.
As she prepared to give a speech at the America House in downtown Kyiv that morning, she revealed that she appeared with a big smile and a “stiff upper lip” to conceal her “inner turmoil.”
In her role as ambassador, Yovanovitch’s speech was not peppered with skepticism or unease, but with unity, which is what she sought to project in her public remarks that day.
“The election hadn’t been called yet, and it didn’t matter who won; it would have been the same speech,” she said. “I focused on celebrating American democracy, on the importance of elections — every voice being heard, every vote being counted. I also sought to reassure Ukrainians that whoever won, America’s strong bipartisan support for Ukraine would continue as it had for the twenty-five years since the fall of the USSR.”
In 2019, she would be recalled from her position by Trump, who cited a lack of trust in her despite being told by a boss that she had “done nothing wrong,” according to The New York Times.
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