The beauty queen who became Trump’s deputy envoy to the Middle East

While she was the spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State, she also used her Twitter account to protest against the sentences given to women protesting compulsory hijab in the country, particularly referencing a video of three women activists distributing flowers to female passengers on a Tehran subway without headscarves, who were subsequently arrested.

After the Revolutionary Guard Corps shot down a Ukrainian plane in January 2020, Ortagus demanded that regime authorities allow the U.S. to participate in the investigation. She also condemned countries’s judiciary in the same year for continuous human rights violations, including the role in the death of journalist Zahra Kazemi and the “death commissions” that killed thousands of political prisoners in the 1980s. Ortagus has repeatedly supported dissidents and protesters on Twitter, stating, “The whole world should stand behind innocent people who are harassed by their own government.”

February 4, 2025 | 5:05 am