“I have taken an unscientific survey among my colleagues … about whether I should resign,” wrote U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman. “The laughter told me everything I needed to know.” | Alex Wong/Getty Images Huntsman says he won’t resign Russia post

U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman brushed off calls to step down after President Donald Trump’s Helsinki summit, writing that “the fragile nature of this moment” compelled him to remain in Moscow.

In an op-ed posted Saturday night in The Salt Lake Tribune, which his brother owns and publishes, the former Utah governor emphasized that his diplomatic staff was too focused on issues like nuclear weapons, Ukraine and Syria “to obsess over politics.”


“I have taken an unscientific survey among my colleagues … about whether I should resign,” he added. “The laughter told me everything I needed to know.”

Huntsman, a onetime Republican presidential contender, was responding directly to a column by the Tribune’s Robert Gehrke, who had written last week, “you work for a pawn, not a president. It’s time to come home.”

Huntsman, along with other Trump administration officials, had faced widespread urging to resign after Trump’s world-scrambling summit and press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Elected officials across the political spectrum had blasted Trump for appearing to lend equal weight to Putin’s denial of election meddling and the U.S. intelligence community’s opposite conclusion.

West Wing morale has tanked since the diplomatic brouhaha, and questions about Putin and Trump’s private meeting are swirling in the absence of clear information from the White House.

But Huntsman told Gehrke that his work in Moscow was too important to give up.

"Popular punditry is ill-suited to describing the acts of courage, dedication and patriotism I regularly witness as chief of mission overseeing one of America’s most sensitive overseas outposts,” he wrote.

“As for my sons, active-duty naval officers whom you also call out, I honor their courageous service each time I salute the Marine guards protecting our large embassy compound,” Huntsman concluded. “Their words when asked if I should resign are unprintable.”