Trump picks Morgan Ortagus as deputy Mideast envoy, but he is not confident about his choice: Here's why

Weeks before assuming the Oval Office, US President-elect Donald Trump nominated former State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus as his deputy Middle East envoy. Trump announced the decision on Friday and said that Ortagus would work under Steve Witkoff, who was one of the first appointments Trump made following his win in the November polls.

However, what attracted attention towards Trump’s decision was the fact that the President-elect was effusive in his Truth Social post announcing the move. He said that Ortagus “fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson." The President-elect did not get into the specifics while announcing the name.

In the past, Ortagus slammed Trump’s “isolationist foreign policy approach,” during the 2016 presidential primary. She eventually shifted to support Trump once he secured the Republican Party nomination. She was soon rewarded for her support when Trump picked her for the job of spokesperson of the State Department for much of his first term.

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The support did not last long

During the 2024 US presidential campaign, Ortagus supported Trump’s former US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley. “These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens,” Trump wrote about Ortagus on Friday.

The former State Department spokesperson is known to have close ties with some of the less-isolationist foreign policy bigwigs in Trump’s gambit. These lawmakers include incoming secretary of state Marco Rubio, incoming national security adviser Mike Walz and former senior White House adviser and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner.

“She will hopefully be an asset to Steve, a great leader and talent, as we seek to bring calm and prosperity to a very troubled region. I expect great results, and soon!” the President-elect furthered. Ortagus is expected to bring her foreign policy experience to the table, given the fact that Witkoff himself has a business background and has never worked in the public sector before.

In the past, Ortagus worked as a public affairs officer at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) before she served as an intelligence analyst in the Department of Treasury. In 2010, she was appointed deputy Treasury attache at the US Embassy in Riyadh.

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Interestingly, the American diplomat converted to Judaism after she began dating Jonathan Weinberger. The couple eventually got married in 2013 and her wedding ceremony was officiated by late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.