Over the course of the last year, the United States’ relationship with South Africa has deteriorated to levels unseen in recent memory, due in large part to Donald Trump’s sustained offensive. Late last year, however, the president took steps that appeared likely to make matters worse.

The White House nominated, and Senate Republicans confirmed, L. Brent Bozell III to be the U.S. ambassador to South Africa. He was hardly an obvious choice for the role: TPM reported that Bozell, in the 1980s, was critical of Black activists in South Africa who fought against their country’s racist apartheid government. And Media Matters has highlighted the conservative activist’s rhetorical record, which does not lend itself to a career in international diplomacy.

My MS NOW colleague Ja’han Jones recently described Bozell as Trump’s “apartheid-defending ambassador to South Africa.”

With the far-right activist in Pretoria, it was tempting to wonder not whether but how soon the relationship between the U.S. and South Africa would get worse. The answer seems to be “not long at all.”

The New York Times reported on the ambassador delivering harsh words against his host government less than a month into his job. From the article:

He claimed that South Africa had more than 150 laws ‘aimed against whites,’ and that the Trump administration was ‘running out of patience’ with the South African government.

He made veiled comments about South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, subtly accusing him of ‘insulting our president,’ an apparent reference to Mr. Ramaphosa’s criticisms of President Trump in a recent interview with The New York Times. And he rejected a South African court’s ruling that an anti-apartheid song was not hate speech. ‘I don’t care what your courts say,’ said the ambassador, L. Brent Bozell III, speaking at a business forum in the Western Cape Province.

Not surprisingly, South Africa’s foreign minister summoned Bozell to a meeting, where he’d be expected to explain his “undiplomatic remarks.”

Time will tell whether Bozell manages to make matters still worse, but in the meantime, consider the broader pattern:

• Bill White, Trump’s ambassador to Belgium, sparked an international incident of sorts when he accused Belgian officials of antisemitism via social media. Belgium’s government was not pleased, and it summoned the U.S. ambassador for an official conversation soon after.
• Charles Kushner, Trump’s ambassador to France, was soon after banned from meeting members of the French government, which is ostensibly his job, after his own politically provocative rhetoric.
• Mike Huckabee, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, recently sparked a regional incident when he suggested that it “would be fine” if Israel took lands stretching across the Middle East from Egypt to Iraq.
• Tom Rose, Trump’s ambassador to Poland, boasted about severing ties with the speaker of Poland’s Parliament after the legislative leader said Trump did not deserve to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

Taken together, Politico recently characterized the group as the American president’s “undiplomatic corps.” The Washington Post’s Max Boot added, “Rather than promoting U.S. interests, many of Trump’s mini-me envoys are alienating their host countries by insulting critics and offending local sensibilities. … Trump does enough damage to America’s reputation by himself. He doesn’t need help from his undiplomatic diplomats in alienating the rest of the world.”

Whether the White House actually approves of the ambassadors’ antics and their capacity to insult their host countries is unclear. Watch this space.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.