We obtained internal documents from the State Department that show how the Trump Administration mocked a U.N. report on poverty in the U.S. and its conclusions on youth poverty. Co-published with our editorial partner @ForeignPolicy codastory.com/disinformation…
The leaked emails also reveal that the UN poverty report may have played into the decision by the US to pull out of the UN Human Rights Council (which @nikkihaley said at the time was about anti-Israel bias and letting rights abusing countries off the hook).
The leak covers the behind-the-scenes jockeying over the wording of this statement, which the US embassy in Geneva posted to its website in response to the UN poverty report. It called the report “inaccurate, inflammatory, and irresponsible.” geneva.usmission.gov/2018/06/22/cou…
I spoke to the last ambassador to the UN HRC before the Trump admin pulled out, @AmbHarper, to ask if the US response was unusual. He called it “the kind of tone that I would expect from China or North Korea or Egypt or Bahrain.”
In a leaked email Mari Stull, a State Department Trump-appointee, ridiculed the fact that the US had high child poverty rates saying “my sons are destitute poor and living off the welfare state of Mom - so guess they contributed to the ‘youth poverty’ crisis in America.”
Sadly, youth poverty in the US is no joke. We have the highest rates in the OECD, which the UN report points out perpetuates inter-generational transmission of poverty. “The American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion,” it says. digitallibrary.un.org/record/1629536…
