“You want to be ambassador to Singapore, one of the most important … friends we have in the Indo-Pacific, a key place that we’re going to be fighting against our greatest adversary in the region, the PRC,” said Duckworth, a Thai-American veteran, as she referred to the People’s Republic of China.
Sinha, a Florida orthopaedic surgeon who reportedly plays golf at the same country club as Trump, grossly overestimated how large the US’ trade surplus was with Singapore last year and did not know when Singapore was going to next chair Asean or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
After chiding Sinha for not doing his “homework” on the city state, the senator from Illinois stressed the importance of Singapore to the US, adding: “This nation is too important to the United States, to Asean, to the entire region.
“And frankly, I think the mission is important to US interests and national security, and it should actually be a foreign service officer. But I have even larger concerns with the political pick when that political pick is somebody as unqualified as you.”
