Midterms are looming, polls are plummeting, war is raging, and the people inside Trump’s State Department are at each other’s throats.
According to new private messages obtained by POLITICO, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and State Department special envoy Paolo Zampolli have been in a pissing match, constantly trading jabs and insults, for going on a year now, with Landau repeatedly accusing Zampolli, who just so happens to claim to be the matchmaker between Donald and Melania Trump, of failing to “stay in his lane.”
“I am hereby ordering you—once again—to immediately stop all work on ANY issues not directly tied to cultural diplomacy, including every one of the issues you mentioned in your recent emails,” a November 2025 email from Landau to Zampolli read. “You have no authority to engage in ANY issues of foreign policy outside of cultural diplomacy, including all the issues you have named.”
By the next day, Landau was doubling down in the same email chain, copying another 15 administration colleagues into his new message, where he wrote that Zampolli had “no intention of staying in the cultural diplomacy lane that you were assigned and accepted, and that you fully intend to continue undertaking unauthorized and possibly unlawful ventures in commercial and economic matters.”
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