From 'the ultimate bureaucrat' Barack Obama to 'it is what it is' Donald Trump, the departing French ambassador reflects on navigating D.C.

By Nahal Toosi @ Politico.com, April 19

[....] His blunt talk, including on Twitter, has endeared him to many in the foreign policy community and beyond, even if they don’t always agree with him.

His advice to the people he leaves behind? Calm down. Take a deep breath.

“Washington is a bit hysterical,” Araud said in an interview with POLITICO a few days before he was set to retire. “People are so appalled by the behavior of the president that they listen a bit too much to their guts instead of really listening to the brain.”

So what should their brains tell them? That Trump, for all his flaws, is asking legitimate questions, Araud said. That the Republican president saw the world “shifting, in a sense, to a new era” and that his “genius” was understanding the “malaise” in the United States [....]