Elizabeth Warren Ad Slams ‘Corrupt’ Trump Ambassadorship That She Voted to Approve

Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is running a new ad slamming the “corrupt” practice of granting ambassadorships to donors like Trump Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland, but Warren was among the senators who approved Sondland’s nomination.

On Friday, Warren rolled out a new ad in Iowa that took aim at Sondland, a central figure in the impeachment of President Donald Trump and a big Trump donor.

“At the center of Donald Trump’s crimes and chaos is the millionaire donor he made an ambassador,” Warren says in the ad, over footage of Sondland.

“Republicans and Democrats have been rewarding big donors with cushy ambassadorships like this for years,” she continues, and adds “It’s Washington corruption at its worst.”

“When I’m president that stops. I’m the only candidate running who has made this promise. I’ll never give ambassadorships to unqualified donors just because they wrote me fat checks,” the ad concludes.

Warren is correct on every count, she has promised not to nominate donors to ambassadorships, and she didn’t give Sondland an ambassadorship because he wrote her a fat check, but she was among the senators who approved his confirmation via unanimous consent in June of 2018. Warren and the rest of the Senate consented to a “voice vote” for Sondland’s confirmation to occur at a session during which Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was the only member present.

Senator Warren — as well as any of the other senators running for president — could have raised an objection to Sondland’s confirmation, but only Warren is running ads against it.

But if the unanimous consent vote seems a bit too technical, Warren has also voted to confirm such ambassadors in the past — some via recorded votes and some via “voice vote” — including 11 Trump nominees.

And a few weeks ago, video emerged of Warren at an October 6, 2016 private fundraiser hosted by Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis, an Obama donor who was appointed ambassador to Hungary in 2009.

Fundraising methods were a major point of contention at the last Democratic debate, with Warren pressing the case against “wine cave” fundraisers, and Senator Bernie Sanders upping the ante by bragging that he’s the o;y Democrat not to take any donations from billionaires, a challenge that Warren has declined to accept.

Watch the ad above via Elizabeth Warren for President.