With Donald Trump's inauguration as president of the United States fast approaching, the strangest — even craziest — post-election transition in U.S. history is about to come to an end. This period has provided a clear demonstration of how unpredictable life with President Trump will be.
A president-elect typically uses the transition time to make Cabinet choices and to study up on the issues he will soon confront, but keeps quiet on policy until he's been sworn into office. But Trump has only paid lip service to the hallowed principle that the U.S. has just one president at a time. Shortly after the election, he began to conduct his own foreign policy.
Just a couple of weeks after becoming president-elect, Trump took to Twitter to suggest that the British government name Nigel Farage, who had led the successful Brexit campaign, as the United Kingdom's ambassador to Washington. Trump may have been unaware that governments choose their own ambassadors, and that the esteemed Sir Kim Darroch was already ensconced in the British Embassy. (The U.K. government quickly announced that Darroch would stay on.)