For inexplicable reasons, the Trump administration apparently pressured Argentina to back out of their announced plan to give President Jimmy Carter the nation’s highest honor. From the Buenos Aires Herald:
The Mauricio Macri administration reverted a decision to award former US president Jimmy Carter the Order of the Liberator General San Martín — the maximum distinction that the country can give to a foreign personality —, under the pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration, CNN web site reported this week.
The official tribute, which had already been approved by the foreign ministry and was published in the Official Gazette, was cancelled after receiving a specific request by the US government, which would have suggested it would be better to delay it. Carter was to be given the award for his work in promoting human rights during Argentina’s last military dictatorship.
After being informed about the decision, the foreign ministry had again requested that President Macri give the award in spite of the rejection by Trump’s government since it had been made official, according to an anonymous foreign ministry official consulted by CNN’s David Cox.
While another former Argentine official attributed the delay of the award to Carter as based on a problem due to the President’s tight schedule, since his trip to Washington DC would be very short, lasting only two days from April 26 to April 27.
From the CNN Español (translated) report:
At the suggestion of Donald Trump, the government of Argentina's President Mauricio Macri would have given up the official awarding of the award with the Order of the Liberator San Martin, the highest distinction in that country, to former President Jimmy Carter, who ruled the United States From 1976 to 1981.
According to a press release from the Argentine Foreign Ministry, the former US ambassador. Martin Lousteau had been the one who proposed to decorate with the Order of the Liberator San Martin to the ex- American president. According to some local media in Argentina, it had been debated whether Lousteau, when he was ambassador, would award him the decoration, but it was decided that it would be President Macri who would do so in Washington during his trip. President Carter's communications director Deanna Congileo told CNN that at the moment she has no details about the recognition and that she can not confirm it for now, despite the fact that the news has become public.
Are the egos of Trump and his White House staff so fragile that they simply could not bear the idea of a former president, a Democrat no less, being honored during a trip to Washington, D.C.?