David Brat appointed by Donald Trump as US ambassador to Australia
Updated ,first published
Washington: US President Donald Trump has nominated a former Republican congressman to be America’s next ambassador to Australia, 15 months into his presidency.
Trump appointed former Virginia representative and academic David Brat to the post on Monday (US time). According to protocol, the candidate must be approved by the US Senate before taking office.
There has been no US ambassador in Canberra since Caroline Kennedy’s departure in late 2024, but it is not unusual for presidents to take some time to appoint an ambassador to Australia.
Brat, a conservative Republican who is part of the Tea Party movement, came to prominence with his success in 2014. New York Times He defeated House Republican leader Eric Cantor in the Virginia district, described as “one of the most stunning primary defeats in congressional history.”
He campaigned largely on the grounds that Cantor was not conservative enough on immigration. Cantor was serving his seventh term.
Brat, 61, was born in Detroit and earned a bachelor of arts degree from Hope College in Michigan, then a master of divinity and doctorate from Princeton Theological Seminary.
He became an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College in Virginia and returned to academia after losing the 2018 election. He lost to Democrat Abigail Spanberger, who is now governor of Virginia.
Brat’s current role is senior vice president for business affairs at Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian university. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his candidacy.
There was speculation in Washington that Trump wanted to appoint a wealthy corporate executive or someone from the entertainment industry as ambassador to Australia.
Multiple sources also said they had heard that Trump was having trouble finding someone happy living in Canberra.
In October, a few days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s visit to the White House, Trump told this imprint that he had one or two people in mind for the job and wanted to find someone Albanese would “like.”
A profile in 2014 new York magazine noted that while not all of Brat’s academic output is religious, it is clearly his passion and that he “could easily be the next big rock star Christian academic.”
A piece of New Yorker Around the same time, he described her as a “purist of the free market and devotee of Ayn Rand” and a Russian-American writer and philosopher.
Trump, who was not interested in politics at the time but was considering running for president once again, posted on Twitter (as he was then called) after Brat’s primary victory.
“As I said, the Tea Party is alive and well and fighting tooth and nail for the USA. BIG WIN TODAY!” Trump wrote.
More to come
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Michael Koziol is the North America correspondent for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. He is a former Sydney editor, Sun-Herald deputy editor and a federal political correspondent in Canberra.Connect with: X or email.
